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A REVIEW OF HAMLET 



By George Henry Miles 

Christine, and Other Poems 

Mohammed 

Essay on Hamlet 

Loretto; or, The Choice. A Novel 

The Truce of God. A Novel 

The Governess. A Novel 




GEORGE HENRY MILES 



A REVIEW 

OF , 

HAMLET 



BY 

GEORGE HENRY MILES 

Late Professor of Literature in Mount St. Mary's 
College, Maryland 



New Edition 



LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

91 AND 93 FIFTH AVE., NEW YORK 
LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 

I907 



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mrm*iii*»VS*ftii-L*-w* 



LIBRARY of C0NGftE9S 
! wo Copies Received 

NOV 29 190/ 

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' >—- » ■■! IH » I, i J tl » " 11 1 !, -- .# 



Copyright, 1870, 
By George H. Miles 






Copyright, 1907, 
By F. B. Miles 



All Rights Reserved 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



PREFACE 

This " Review of Shakespeare's Tragedy 
of Hamlet" was first published in 1870. 
Much attention was attracted to it because 
of the striking point of view from which 
it is written and its entirely novel and 
original interpretation of the character of 
Hamlet. Edwin Booth, the great actor, 
wrote-*a letter thanking Miles for this in- 
terpretation, which he adopted, and they 
became good friends. A great English 
critic has lately said of this Review : " But 
what strikes us most in the essay is, not 
only the intensity of the critic's sympa- 
thetic appreciation of the poet's work, but 
his penetrative insight into its essence. 
Whatever may be thought of its main 
thesis and of some of its minor conten- 
tions, no more vigorous, subtle, and original 
contribution to American Shakespearian 
criticism has ever been made." 



Preface 

Miles was especially adapted to the 
work of dramatic criticism, for he was him- 
self a practised writer and dramatist. At 
the age of twenty-four he had written a 
tragedy, " Mohammed," which, against a 
hundred competitors, had gained the prize 
of one thousand dollars that was offered 
by Edwin Forrest, the great actor and 
philanthropist, for the best tragedy in five 
acts by an American writer. Five years 
later his tragedy of " De Soto" was pro- 
duced by James E. Murdock, an eminent 
tragedian, and was performed in nearly all 
parts of the United States. After some 
years more of literary work in writing 
plays, novels, and poems, Miles accepted 
the Professorship of English Literature 
at the University of Mount St. Mary's, 
Maryland. 

The Review was originally intended as 
a lecture to be delivered by Edwin Forrest, 
and was afterwards amplified and pub- 
lished by the author in book form. He 
meant it to be used also as a text-book 

vi 



Preface 

for advanced students in English Litera- 
ture. As he himself says in writing to 
a friend distinguished as an educator, to 
whom he had sent a copy of " Hamlet " : 
" An experience of seven years* teaching 
has convinced me of the value of the mas- 
terpieces of the great dramatist as a means 
of education. It is my intention to follow 
this essay with others on Macbeth, Lear, 
Othello, and Henry IV. In my classes 
I have found that most collegians are easily 
trained to understand and appreciate the 
majesty and beauty of the poetry. Even 
dull students, of seventeen years or more, 
when the finer passages are read to them 
by a teacher with only a very limited 
power of elocution, can be aroused to a 
keen sense of interest in and enjoyment 
of the dramas and of their marvellous 
literary merit." 

Miles was also of the opinion that these 
essays would doubtless be welcomed as 
agreeable text-books by that very large 
class of people who, either from scruples 

vii 



Preface 

of conscience or lack of opportunity, are 
debarred from seeing and hearing Shake- 
speare's plays at the theatre. It was while 
working at this interesting series, and 
with the Review of Macbeth half finished, 
that death brushed the pen out of his 
hands, leaving cc Hamlet " as his only fin- 
ished Shakespearian essay. The fragment 
on Macbeth has been printed at the end 
of the book. 

I have to thank the Rev. Thomas E. 
Cox, of St. Basil's Church, Chicago, for 
valuable assistance and suggestion in the 
preparation and revision of this volume. 

F. B. M. 



Vlll 



A REVIEW OF HAMLET 



MACBETH — A FRAGMENT 



A Review of Hamlet 

In all of Shakespeare's finer plays, there 
is sure to be, at least, one master mind 
among the characters. Lear, even in gro- 
tesque dilapidation, is a master mind, Iago 
is another, Macbeth, or rather his Demon 
Lady, is another ; but the tragedies them- 
selves are far from owing their chief dra- 
matic force and interest to this individual 
ascendency. In the calm, vindictive envy 
of Iago, in the rage and desolation of 
Lear, in the remorse of Macbeth, pas- 
sion or plot is the governing motive of 
interest; but there is never a storm in 
Hamlet over which the c noble and most 
sovereign reason ' of the young prince is 
not as visibly dominant as the rainbow, 
the crowning grace and glory of the scene. 
Richard is the mind nearest Hamlet in 
scope and power; but it is the jubilant 



A Review of Hamlet 



wickedness, the transcendent dash and 
courage of the last Plantagenet that rivet 
his hold on an audience ; whereas, the 
most salient phase of Hamlet's character 
is his superb intellectual superiority to all 
comers, even to his most dangerous assail- 
ant, madness. The fundamental charm of 
Hamlet is its amazing eloquence ; its 
thoughts are vaster than deeds, its elo- 
quence mightier than action. The trag- 
edy, in its most imposing aspect, is a series 
of intellectual encounters. The Crusader 
of Ashby de la Zouche, engaging all the 
challengers, is not more picturesque than 
this Desdichado of Denmark consecu- 
tively overthrowing every antagonist, from 
Polonius in the Castle to Laertes in the 
grave. 

But the difficulty of representing this ! 
The enormous difficulty of achieving a 
true tragic success, less by the passions and 
trials than by the pure intellectual splen- 
dor of the hero! The almost superhu- 
man task of imparting intensest dramatic 



A Review of Hamlet 



interest to a long war of words — for 
the part of Hamlet is well nigh twice 
the length of any other on the stage — the 
almost superhuman power whereby the 
prince, instead of degenerating into a mere 
senior wrangler, is so exalted by the 
witchery of speech, that the lit brow 
of the young academician for once out- 
shines the warrior's crest, for once com- 
pels a more than equal homage from the 
masses ! 

Perhaps Shakespeare never asked him- 
self the question, never precisely recog- 
nized the difficulty. But, as the vision 
of the unwritten Drama loomed vaguely 
before him, he must have been conscious 
of a summons to put forth all his strength. 
With a central figure of such subtle spirit- 
uality, with a plot subordinating action to 
eloquence, or rather substituting eloquence 
for action, the great dramatist instinctively 
employed a Saracenic richness and variety 
of detail. The structure of Macbeth is 
Egyptian, massive as the pyramids, or 

3 



A Review of Hamlet 



Thebes ; of Othello, unadorned, symmet- 
rical, classic; of Lear, wild, unequal, fan- 
tastic, straggling as a Druid Grove ; but 
Hamlet resembles some limitless Gothic 
Cathedral with its banners and effigies, its 
glooms and floods of stained light, and 
echoes of unending dirges. I never read 
'Act I. Scene i. Elsinore. A platform 
before the Castle, Francisco at his post. 
Enter to him Bernardo, ' without, somehow, 
beholding the myriad-minded poet at his 
desk, pale, peaceful, conscientious, yet 
pausing as in the Stratford bust, with lips 
apart, and pen and eye awhile uplifted, as 
organists pause that silence may settle into 
a deeper hush, — the longest pause at such 
a moment that Shakespeare ever made. 
But though not embarrassed by its diffi- 
culties, he must surely have been awed by 
the immensity of his undertaking. For 
the fundamental idea of the tragedy is not 
only essentially non-dramatic, but pecu- 
liarly liable to misinterpretation ; since any 
marked predominance of the intellectual 

4 



A Review of Hamlet 



over the animal nature is constantly mis- 
taken for weakness. 

The difference between a strong man 
and a weak one, though indefinable, is 
infinite. The prevalent view of Hamlet 
is, that he is weak. We hear him spoken 
of as the gentle prince, the doomed prince, 
the meditative prince, but never as the 
strong prince, the great prince, the terri- 
ble prince. He is commonly regarded 
as more of a dreamer than a doer ; some- 
thing of a railer at destiny ; a blighted, 
morbid existence, unequal either to for- 
giveness or revenge ; delaying action till 
action is of no use, and dying the vic- 
tim of mere circumstance and accident. 
The exquisite metaphor of Goethe's about 
the oak tree and the vase predestined for 
a rose, crystallizes and perpetuates both the 
critical and the popular estimate of Ham- 
let. The Wilhelm Meister view is, prac- 
tically, the only view ; a hero without a 
plan, pushed on by events alone, endowed 
more properly with sentiments than with 

5 



A Review of Hamlet 



a character, — in a word, weak. But the 
Hamlet of the critics and the Hamlet of 
Shakespeare are two different persons. A 
close review of the play will show that 
Hamlet is strong, not weak, — that the 
basis of his character is strength, illimitable 
strength. There is not an act or an utter- 
ance of his, from first to last, which is not 
a manifestation of power. Slow, cautious, 
capricious, he may sometimes be, or seem 
to be ; but always strong, always large- 
souled, always resistless. 

The care, the awe, with which Shakes- 
peare approached his work, are visible in 
the opening scene. You cannot advance 
three lines without feeling that the poet is 
before you in all his majesty, armed for 
some vast achievement, winged for the 
empyrean. In all that solemn guard relief, 
there is not a word too much or too little. 
How calm and sad it is ! sadness prefigur- 
ing the unearthly theme, — grand synco- 
pated minor chords, — the Adagio of the 
overture to Don Giovanni ! The super- 

6 



A Review of Hamlet 



human is instantly foreshadowed, and 
hardly foreshadowed before revealed. The 
dreaded twice-seen sight is scarcely men- 
tioned. Bernardo has just begun his 
story, — 

Last night of all 
When yon same star that 's westward from the 

pole 
Had made his course to illume that part of 

Heaven 
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, 
The bell then beating one, — 

when, without farther prelude, the sepul- 
chral key-note of the plot is struck, and 
enter Ghost, dumb, majestic, terrible, defi- 
ant, and, above all, rapid. An honest 
ghost, a punctual ghost ; no lagging Raw- 
head and Bloody-bones, expected indefi- 
nitely from curfew to cock-crow. Mark 
the pains with which this magnificent 
apparition is gradually got up ; observe 
how crisply and minutely the actor is 
instructed to dress the part. First the 
broad outlines : 

7 



A Review of Hamlet 



that fair and warlike form 

In which the majesty of buried Denmark 
Did sometimes march, — 

the very armor he had on 

When he the ambitious Norway combated j 
So frown'd he once, when in an angry parle 
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice. 

The second touches are more precise 
and vivid. 

Ham. Arm'd, say you ? 

Mar., Bern. Arm'd, my Lord. 

Ham. From top to toe ? 

Mar., Bern. My lord from head to foot. 

Ham. Then saw you not his face ? 

Hor. O yes, my lord, he wore his beaver up. 

Ham. What, looked he frowningly ? 

Hor. A countenance more in sorrow than in 

anger. 
Ham. Pale or red ? 
Hor. Nay, very pale. 
Ham. And fixed his eyes upon you ? 
Hor. Most constantly. 

Ham. Stayed it long ? 

8 



A Review of Hamlet 



Hor. While one with moderate haste might 

tell a hundred. 
Mar., Bern. Longer, longer. 
Hor. Not when I saw it. 
Ham. His beard was grizzled ? no ! 
Hor. It was as I have seen it in his life, 
A sable silver'd. 

No misconception now, my heavy friend 
who plays the ghost ; no room for specu- 
lation in the wardrobe now. You cannot 
go wrong if you would. c Armed from top 
to toe,' c his beaver up/ c frowning,' but 
the eyebrows not too bushy, for the frown 
is more in sorrow than in anger. Not a 
particle of rouge, but pale, very pale ; nor 
any rolling of the eyes, sir, either, but a 
fixed gaze. The very pace at which you 
are to move is measured : count a hun- 
dred as you make your martial stalk and 
vanish. The delineation is Pre-Raphael- 
ite, even to that last consummate touch, 
the sable silvered beard. It seems easy, 
this slow portraiture of a Phantom, just as 
all perfectly executed feats seem easy ; but 

9 



A Review of Hamlet 



it is painting the rainbow. And lest this 
honest Ghost should become too human, 
with one wave of the wand it is rendered 
not only unearthly, but impalpable. 

Hor. Stop it, Marcellus ! 

Mar. Shall I strike it with my partisan ? 

Hor. Do if it will not stand. 

Bern. 'Tis here ! 

Hor. 'T is here ! 

Mar. 'T is gone. ( Exit Ghost ) 

We do it wrong, being so majestical, 
To offer it the show of violence ; 
For it is, as the air, invulnerable, 
And our vain blows malicious mockery. 

Manlike, magnificent, yet ghastly too, — 
for our blood is made to curdle by that 
start at cock-crow. 

Ber. It was about to speak when the cock crew. 
Hor. And then it started like a guilty thing 
Upon a fearful summons. 

What a dark, weird whisper ! How it 
goes home to the popular heart, — all that 
awful majesty crouching at cock-crow ! 

IO 



A Review of Hamlet 



And when the picture is thus marvel- 
lously finished, observe how lovingly it is 
framed in gold : 

Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes 
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, 
The bird of dawning singeth all night long : 
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad ; 
The nights are wholesome; then no planets 

strike, 
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm : 
So hallowed and so gracious is that time. 

Where, save by the pencil of the Paraclete, 
has such divine use been made of the 
music of the bird c that is the trumpet to 
the morn ! ' 

There is a loving care, a sedulous finish, 
about the whole portraiture, assuring us 
that Shakespeare wrote the part for him- 
self. We know that he acted it, and that 
it was c the top of his performance/ 
What a treat to have seen him ! Better 
even than listening to Homer chanting 

his fiery epics. Perhaps the poet dared 

ii 



A Review of Hamlet 



not trust his Ghost to other hands ; for 
the fate of the whole tragedy hinges 
upon the masterly rendering of this per- 
ilous part. Although Burbage, and other 
players of the Blackfriars were more pop- 
ular general actors, yet the elaborate im- 
personation of a departed soul differs, 
almost as much as its conception, from 
the coarser eloquence and action by which 
mortal passions and emotions are counter- 
feited. That awful monotone, that stat- 
uesque repose with which the Ghost still 
walks the stage, are probably a remi- 
niscence of him who gave such immortal 
advice to the Players, and who first acted 
' the Ghost in his own Hamlet.' But 
more than this. Aubrey had heard that 
Shakespeare was ' a handsome, well-shaped 
man ; ' the Stratford Bust and the engrav- 
ing by Martin Dreeshout confirm the 
tradition. Connecting this tradition with 
our positive knowledge, that, not with- 
standing his invincible modesty and pro- 
priety, he ventured to undertake a part 

12 



A Review of Hamlet 



which, although predestined for himself, 
he scrupled not, in obedience to the com- 
pulsion of the plot, to consecrate for all 
time as the supreme type and model of 
manly beauty, may we not be permitted to 
associate his likeness, in some measure at 
least, with that of the majesty of buried 
Denmark ? 

See what a grace was seated on this brow ; 
Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself; 
An eye like Mars to threaten and command ; 
A station like the herald Mercury 
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill ; 
A combination and a form, indeed, 
Where every god did seem to set his seal, 
To give the world assurance of a man. 

But prompt as the apparition is to come, 
it is slow to speak. That it means to 
speak, we know ; that it means to make 
some fearful unfolding, we feel ; but it 
remains deaf and dumb to all Horatio's 
pleading, — more terrible, more significant, 
more obstinately mute than the Proph- 

*3 



A Review of Hamlet 



etess in the Agamemnon. This superb 
visitant, so carefully, so cunningly con- 
structed, is not to be fathomed or unriddled 
at sight. It does not pay its first visit to 
Hamlet and blurt out all at once, as a vul- 
gar, unauthenicated phantom would have 
done. We are allowed first to hear of it ; 
then to steal a glimpse of it; then to watch 
it ' while one with moderate haste may tell 
a hundred/ But just when expectation 
is kindled to the highest pitch, the scene 
shifts, and we are consigned by Horatio 

Unto young Hamlet ; for, upon my life, 
This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him. 

Not only is the interest heightened by this 
wise suspense, but it is artistically essential 
to the perfect intelligibility and effect of 
the Ghost's long revelation that we should 
have some antecedent acquaintance with 
the guilty King and his infatuated Queen. 
And not less important that we should 
behold this same young Hamlet and his 
attitude at Court before the advent of the 



A Review of Hamlet 



superhuman — a Hamlet uninfluenced by 
anything more terrible than his father's 
sudden death and mother's sudden mar- 
riage, yet most profoundly influenced by 
that double woe. How briefly, yet how 
completely, this is done. 

King. But now my cousin Hamlet and my 

son, — 
Ham. A little more than kin and less than 

kind. (Aside.) 
King. How is it that the clouds still hang on 

you ? 
Ham. Not so, my lord; I am too much i' the 

sun. 



Notice the first keen flashes of this noble 
and most sovereign reason sparkling in its 
own gloom like polished jet. Disarmed 
at the first pass that uncle-father. Nor 
does the Queen fare better. 

Queen. Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour 
' off, 

And let thine eye look like a friend on 
Denmark. 

15 



A Review of Hamlet 



Do not forever with thy vailed lids 
Seek for thy noble father in the dust : 
Thou know'st 't is common — all that 

live must die, 
Passing through nature to eternity. 
Ham. Ay, madam; it is common. 

Her maternal platitudes are shivered by 
the easy scorn of his reply. But this res- 
olute woman, then undergoing perhaps 
her first experience in being silenced, 
answers very much to the purpose : 

If it be, 
Why seems it so particular with thee ? 
Ham. Seems, madam ! — 

It is like c the flash and motion ' of Geraint. 
No more questionings, but c we pray you,' 
c we beseech you,' c 7 is sweet and commend- 
able in your nature} c let not thy mother 
lose her prayers, ' c be as ourself in Den- 
mark/ And he? — he is hardly listening : 
he will, in all his best, obey them : he will 
stay at home and not go back to school at 
Wittenberg, For let it not be forgotten, 

16 



A Review of Hamlet 



that this superb intelligence, whose career 
has charmed and perplexed mankind for 
three centuries, was not too old to go 
c back to school in Wittenberg/ This 
immaturity should be carefully remem- 
bered in the estimate of his character. A 
Collegian, even of thirty, summoned by 
the visible ghost of a murdered sire from 
love and life and the fair orchards of rip- 
ening manhood, to revenge and ruin, may 
exhibit much hesitancy and vacillation, 
without being tainted with inherent infirm- 
ity of purpose. 

That wondrous first soliloquy is the 
simultaneous presentation of a plot and of 
a character, — of all the tragic antecedents 
of the Play, and of Hamlet struggling 
through the gloom, the incarnation of 
eloquent despair. 

O, that this too — too solid flesh would melt, 
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew ! 
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd 
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter ! O God ! 
O God! 

2 17 



A Revtezv of Hamlet 



How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable 
Seem to me all the uses of this world ! &c. 

Is this a sample of the imputed c waver- 
ing melancholy and soft lamenting ? ' Since 
the Psalms of David, and the still deeper 
pathos of the Passion, where has mental 
agony found such awful utterance ? Nor 
is the final line, — 

But break, my heart, — for I must hold my 
tongue ! 

any evidence of weakness. For what 
could the man say ? The throne was not 
hereditary ; his mother was mistress of her 
own hand ; he had no proof, not even a 
fixed suspicion, of foul play./ His tongue 
was sealed until the coming of the Ghost. 
It is manifest from the King's speech at 
the opening of the second scene, that the 
royal pair are then giving their first audi- 
ence of state. Cornelius and Voltimond 
are dispatched to Norway ; the suit of 
Laertes is heard and granted; and Ham- 
let, who was not to be trusted abroad > 

18 



A Review of Hamlet 



forbidden to return to Wittenberg. Most 
assuredly, it is Hamlet's first public reap- 
pearance. Since his father's funeral, he 
has lived in the strictest seclusion, or he 
could not else be ignorant of Horatio's 
presence in Elsinore. It may be as well 
to remember this ; for the play is so ellip- 
tical, that one is apt to marvel why the two 
friends have not sooner met. Some hint 
of Hamlet's having been summoned to 
Court to be publicly warned from re- 
entering the University, must have leaked 
out, or we should scarcely have Marcellus 
saying — 

And I this morning know 
Where we shall find him most conveniently. 

Horatio respected the Prince's privacy 
until forced by love and duty to invade it. 
But he could scarcely have been prepared 
for the sad change in his schoolmate. He, 
as well as Ophelia, had only known him as 

The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, 
sword ; 

19 



A Review of Hamlet 



The expectancy and Rose of the fair state, 
The glass of fashion and the mould of form, 
The observ'd of all observers. 

With too much reason, Hamlet had lost 
all trust in his mother ; and when we cease 
to trust our mothers, we cease to trust hu- 
manity. Hamlet belonged to that middle 
circle of the Sons of Light, who become 
cynics, instead of villains, in adversity. 
Characters of perfect sincerity, of exhaust- 
less tenderness, of ready trust, when once 
deceived by the few that were dearest, be- 
come irrevocably mistrustful of all. Your 
commonplace neighbor who knows himself 
a sham, accepts, perhaps prefers, a society 
of shams ; has no idea of being very true 
to anybody, or of anybody's being very true 
to him ; leads a sham life and dies a sham 
death, — as near as the latter achievement 
is possible, — leaving a set of sham mourn- 
ers behind him. But the heart whose per- 
fect insight is blinded only by its perfect 
love, once fooled in its tenderest faith, 

20 



A Review of Hamlet 



must be either saint or cynic ; must belong 
either to God or to doubt forevermore. 
A blighted gentleness is as savage in the 
expression of its scorn as your born mis- 
anthropist or your natural villain ; save 
that the hatred of the one is for vice, and 
cant, and cunning, of the other for credulity 
and virtue ; save that the last is cruel in 
word and deed, the first in word alone. 

Yet Hamlet is less a cynic than a satir- 
ist, and less a satirist than a Nemesis. 
Though merciless in plucking the mask 
from a knave, a villain, or a fool, yet the 
dormant tenderness which underlies his 
character, flashes fitfully out through his 
interviews with his mother, Laertes and 
Polonius, as well as being steadily mani- 
fest in his unquestioning trust in Horatio 
after their reunion. For such a thorough 
political change has overshadowed Den- 
mark, that their meeting is rather a spirit- 
ual reunion than an interview. By the 
inexorable logic of events, Hamlet is 
ranged against the throne, the conspicuous 

21 



A Review of Hamlet 



head and front of a moral opposition, an 
inevitable, though passive, rebel. If Ho- 
ratio is loyal, no matter what their previous 
friendship, they are thenceforth foes. One 
must have lived through civil war to ap- 
preciate the dexterous nicety with which 
Hamlet feels his former friend. And yet 
this early association of excessive mistrust 
with excessive morbidity, inclines us to sus- 
pect that the subsequent shock of the Ghost 
was rather an arrest of the slow degener- 
ation of fixed melancholy into madness, 
than an aggravation of antecedent lunacy. 

(Enter Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo.) 

Hor. Hail to your lordship. 

Ham. I am glad to see you : 

Horatio, — or I do forget myself. 
Hor. The same, my lord, and your poor 

servant ever. 
Ham. Sir, my good friend, — I '11 change that 
name with you : 
And what make you from Wittenberg^ 

Horatio ? — 
Marcellus ? 

22 



A Review of Hamlet 



Mar. My good lord — 

Ham. I am very glad to see you. — Good 
even, Sir. — 
But what, in faith, make you from 
Wittenberg ? 
Hor. A truant disposition good my lord. 
Ham. I would not hear your enemy say so, 

Nor shall you do mine ear that violence, 
To make it truster of your own report 
Against yourself. I know you are no 

truant. 
But what is your affair in Elsinore ? 

For the third time. And see the dark 
hinting in the next line at the royal c rouse * 
and c wassail ; ' at the orgies of the scan- 
dalous wedding — as if Horatio might pos- 
sibly have come to share them. 

We '11 teach you to drink deep ere you depart. 

Horatio instantly detects and answers the 
inuendo. 

My lord, I came to see your father's 
funeral. 

2 3 



A Reviezu of Hamlet 



Ham. I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow- 
student ; 
I think it was to see my mother's 
wedding. 
Hor. Indeed^ my lord, it followed hard upon. 

Even this little, from a man like Horatio, 
is enough ; they are on the same side, rebels 
both. Quick as lightning the glance is 
given and returned ; he can trust Marcel- 
lus and Bernardo too, and bares his heart 
to them with a fierce sigh of relief. 

Thrift, thrift, Horatio ! the funeral 

baked meats 
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage 

tables. 
Would I had met my dearest foe in 

Heaven 
Ere ever I had seen that day, Horatio. 
My father, — methinks I see my father. 
Hor. O where, my lord ? 
Ham. In my mind's eye, Horatio. 
Hor. I saw him once; he was a goodly King. 
Ham. He was a man, take him for all in all, 
I shall not look upon his like again. 
24 



A Review of Hamlet 



This brief introduction to the main theme 
is inimitable. How exquisitely the ear 
is made to long for Horatio's blunt 
transition : 

My lord, I think I saw him yesternight. 
Ham. Saw ! who ? 
Hor. My lord, the King, your father. 
Ham. The King, my father ! 

Hor. Season your admiration for awhile 

With an attent ear, till I may deliver, 

Upon the witness of these gentlemen, 

This marvel to you. 

Instead of being unnerved by the story, 
the Prince is calm, collected, determined ; 
cautious, reticent, and longing for night. 
He dismisses them with the stately cour- 
tesy which distinguishes him throughout 
the play ; enjoining silence and promising 
to share their watch betwixt eleven and 
twelve. 

Once more on the Platform before the 
Castle, the poet's verse resumes the awful 
minor in which his tragic preludes are so 
often conceived. 

2 5 



A Review of Hamlet 



{Enter Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus.) 

Ham. The air bites shrewdly ; it is very cold. 

Hor. It is a nipping and an eager air. 

Ham. What hour now ? 

Hor. I think it lacks of twelve. 

Mar. No, it is struck. 

Hor. Indeed ? I heard it not : then it draws 
near the season 

Wherein the spirit held his wont to 

walk. 

{A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off within.) 

What does this mean, my lord ? 
Ham. The King doth wake to-night, and takes 
his rouse, 
Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up- 

spring reels ; 
And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish 

down, 
This kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray 

out 
The triumph of his pledge. 
Hor. Is it a custom ? 

Ham. Ay, marry is it : 

But to my mind, — though I am native 
here, 

26 



A Review of Hamlet 



And to the manner born — it is a custom 
More honoured in the breach than the 
observance. 

We have quoted the whole scene up to 
this point, because just here occurs the 
first serious conflict between the Quarto 
of 1604 and the Folio. The twenty-two 
lines that follow in the modern text on 
the authority of the Quarto, are wanting 
in the Folio. As the Folio afterward 
omits nearly the whole Fourth Scene of 
the Fourth Act ; and as the larger omis- 
sion involves almost essentially the charac- 
ter cf Hamlet himself, we propose to 
inquire in advance whether these large 
omissions on the part of the Folio are 
deliberate or accidental. 

c Previous to the publication of the 
Folio edition of Shakespeare's dramatic 
works in 1623, under the auspices of his 
fellow-actors, Heminge and Condell,' says 
Mr. Dyce in his Preface, c seventeen of 
his plays had appeared in Quarto at 

various dates. The Folio of 1623 in- 

27 



A Review of Hamlet 



eludes, with the exception of Pericles, the 
plays which had previously appeared in 
quarto, and twenty others, which till then 
had remained in manuscript. Though 
these quartos — the Hamlet of 1604 
amongst them — found their way to the 
press without either the consent of the author 
or of the managers, it is certain that nearly 
all of them were printed, with more or less 
correctness and completeness, from tran- 
scripts of the theatre/ It must be con- 
ceded, that the Quarto of 1 604 is especially 
correct ; but still the original, or standard, 
from which it was taken, remained, of 
course, in the hands of Heminge and 
Condell, who represented the management. 
Now, it cannot be doubted, that Heminge 
and Condell must have been perfectly 
familiar with a c stolen and surreptitious 
copy* published right under their eyes in 
Fleet street, at the very time they were 
acting the Play. They must not only 
have been conversant with a copy which 
they specifically denounce, but, as old 

28 



A Review of Hamlet 



c fellows of the Blackfriars,' they must 
have had the true version at their fingers' 
ends. So that if the Folio fail to repro- 
duce a conspicuous passage of length 
contained in a previous Quarto, the fair- 
est inference would seem to be, that the 
passage is either spurious or subsequently 
condemned and erased by their associate 
Shakespeare himself, or at his instance. 
For it is inconceivable that two friends 
and fellow-actors of Shakespeare's honor- 
ably distinguished in his will, however guilty 
of minor inaccuracies, could have been so 
inconceivably negligent as to overlook, or 
so unconscientious as to suppress, without 
the author's warrant, any genuine, accepted, 
standard, salient portion of a leading part 
— least of all, the leading part of Hamlet. 
The temptation was all the other way — 
to expansion, not contraction. The title 
page of the Quarto of 1604 professes to 
give the play £ enlarged to almost as much 
again as it was, according to the true and 
perfect Coppie.' The editors of the 

29 



A Review of Hamlet 



Folio were quite as anxious to exhibit the 
writings of their departed friend, c cured 
and perfect of their limbs ' and c absolute 
in their numbers/ Even the £ unex- 
ampled carelessness ' of Blount, the sup- 
posed supervisor of the press copy 
c handed over to him by Heminge and 
Condell,' dared not wilfully ignore a 
striking scene made still more memorable 
by a long Soliloquy. The twenty-two 
lines in question, as well as the scene in 
the Fourth Act, although introduced at 
the earlier rehearsals, must therefore have 
been silenced in the standard copy. And 
by the standard copy, we mean the acting 
copy matured under Shakespeare's own 
eye, and consecrated by his final imprim- 
atur. At all events, the stolen Quarto 
of 1604 cannot possibly dictate the final 
aspect of a drama whose author lived 
twelve years after its first surreptitious 
publication. We must look to the Folio 
for the latest phase of Shakespeare's 
manuscripts ; and, faulty as it may be in 

3° 



A Review of Hamlet 



minor matters, we cannot but regard a 
significant and palpably deliberate omis- 
sion conclusive against the Quarto, in the 
absence of direct proof, or the very 
strongest intrinsic evidence to the con- 
trary. 

But in the case before us, and in the 
•vastly more important omission in the 
Fourth Act, the intrinsic evidence sustains 
the Folio. After 

— it is a custom 
More honoured in the breach than the obser- 
vance, 

the following lines are omitted in the 
Folio : 

This heavy-headed revel east and west 

Makes us traduc'd and tax'd of other nations : 

They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish 

phrase 
Soil our addition; and, indeed, it takes 
From our achievements, though perform'd at 

height, 
The pith and marrow of our attribute. 

3i 



A Review of Hamlet 



So, oft it chances in particular men, 

That, for some vicious mole of nature in them, 

As in their birth (wherein they are not guilty, 

Since nature cannot choose his origin,) 

By their o'ergrowth of some complexion, 

Oft breaking down the pales and forts of 

reason ; 
Or by some habit that too much o'erleavens 
The form of plausive manners ; — that these 

men — 
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect, 
Being nature's livery or fortune's star, — 
Their virtues else, (be they as pure as grace, 
As infinite as man may undergo) 
Shall in the general censure take corruption 
From that particular fault : the dram of eale 
Doth all the noble substance often doubt 
To his own scandal. 

' The dram of ill 

Doth all the noble substance throw in doubt,' 

seems to be the meaning of the line. 

Possibly the passage is genuine : an 
overflow of Shakespeare's boundless wealth 
of thought and imagery. But it is asking 
too much, even of Hamlet, to moralize 

32 



A Review of Hamlet 



at such length at such a moment. Moral- 
izing to such little purpose, too, in a 
feeble disquisition that soon degenerates 
from parenthetical confusion into hopeless 
bewilderment. It may indeed be urged 
in support of the disquisition, that it pro- 
longs the suspense; that it gives the three 
watchers better opportunities of action ; 
that Hamlet does not expect to be listened 
to, in fact, is not half listening to himself, 
— and hence, in the gradual entanglement 
of the discourse, we have only another 
miracle of Shakespeare's genius ; that, all 
the while, Horatio and Marcellus can be 
glancing back into the midnight for the 
ghostly confirmation of their story ; that 
Hamlet himself, with eye aslant, dimly 
perceived the coming apparition while 
stammering out that impotent conclusion ; 
that Horatio's c Look, my lord, it comes!' 
besides being the rhythmical complement 
of c To his own scandal* is too bald and 
•abrupt, and cannot directly follow c More 
honoured in the breach than the observ- 
3 33 



A Review of Hamlet 



ancej without violating the very soul of 
verse. 

But strong as this plea is for the passage, 
there is a stronger one against it: it is 
weak. Not, by any means, that the youth 
who could so calmly moralize at such a 
crisis is weak, but that the disquisition 
itself, good as it may be, is not good 
enough for Hamlet — that the staple 
thought is not up to the mark of that 
divine intellect ; that it gives an undue 
preponderance to the meditative element 
in that complicated character; that it 
begets a vague impression of feebleness at 
variance with the radical conception of the 
part; that it is clearly unequal to the rest 
of the scene, and a blot on the magnifi- 
cent sphere of thought and action by 
which it is followed : that, although per- 
mitting a little side play, which could 
have been better attained, were it worth 
while, by a brief hurried dialogue, it 
darkens the coming splendor, and hovers 
like a pall over that radiant afterflash — 

34 



A Review of Hamlet 



Angels and ministers of grace, defend us ! — 

In fact there is almost an intrinsic certainty 
that the poet cut out the passage without 
perfectly reuniting the broken thread. And 
the wonder is, not that this small neglect 
should occur — not that in the develop- 
ment of a character so intricate, so refined, 
so subtle, an incongruity should arise, — 
but that one or two bold erasures should 
leave the portraiture symmetrical and 
complete. 

In reply to Hamlet's invocation, the 
Ghost merely beckons. Grand, deathless 
words — much fearful, passionate striving 
must ensue before the mighty phantom is 
permitted to speak. 

Hor. It beckons you to go away with it, 

As if it some impartment did desire 

To you alone. 
Mar. Look, with what courteous action 

It waves you to a more removed ground ; 

But do not go with it. 
Hor. No, by no means. 

35 



A Review of Hamlet 



Ham. It will not speak ; then will I follow it. 

Hor. Do not, my lord. 

Ham. Why, what should be the fear ? 

I do not set my life at a pin's fee ; 
And for my soul, what can it do to that, 
Being a thing immortal as itself? 

How the two soldiers at his side — how 
even the beckoning majesty of buried 
Denmark — are dwarfed by this sublime 
challenge flashed from the living to the 
dead. 

Ham. It waves me still. — 

Go on ; I '11 follow thee. 
Mar. You shall not go, my lord. 
Ham. Hold off your hands. 

Hor. Be rul'd; you shall not go. 
Ham. My fate cries out, 

And makes each petty artery in this body 
As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve. 

(Ghost beckons.} 
Still am I call'd ; unhand me, gentle- 
men, — (Breaking from them.) 
By heaven, I '11 make a ghost of him 

that lets me : — 
I say, away ! — Go on ; I '11 follow thee. 

36 



A Review of Hamlet 



The friendly grasp is paralyzed less by an 
exertion of the Nemean lion's nerve than 
by the superhuman fitness and intellec- 
tual glare of the threat. It is a spiritual 
thunderbolt. 

The scene shifts. Deeper gloom, 
deeper horror : a place to put toys of 
desperation into every brain. Once more 
the Ghost — Hamlet following, haggard, 
breathless: young life taxed to the utter- 
most in its proud grapple with the 
walking grave ; matchless intellect well 
nigh strained to utter overthrow by the 
terrors of this phantom chase; that voice- 
less, armed spirit, the still, unpeopled 
midnight, and the doomed boy of 
Wittenberg ! 

After such profound elaboration and sus- 
pense, the great difficulty, now that the 
Ghost must speak, is to find adequate words 
for him ; to make his language as effective 
and unearthly as his bearing ; to give him 
voice without damaging or destroying the 
illusion. This is so perfectly managed, 

37 



A Review of Hamlet 



however, that the spectre, instead of losing 
in effect, becomes still more spectral by its 
long revelation. The instant the figure 
advances into broader light, the back- 
ground deepens into darker mystery. 

Ham. Where wilt thou lead me ? Speak ; I '11 

go no further. 
Ghost. Mark me. 
Ham. I will. 

Ghost. My hour is almost come, 

When I to sulphurous and tormenting 

flames 
Must render up myself. 
Ham. Alas, poor ghost ! 

Ghost. Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing 

To what I shall unfold. 
Ham. Speak ; I am bound 

to hear. 
Ghost. So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt 
hear. 

But that I am forbid 

To tell the secrets of my prison-house, 
I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word 
Would harrow up thy soul ; freeze thy 
young blood, 
38 



A Review of Hamlet 



Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from 

their spheres ; 
Thy knotted and combined locks to part, 
And each particular hair to stand on end 
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine, 
But this eternal blazon must not be 
To ears of flesh and blood. 

Observe with what oracular antithesis the 
climax of the story is put : 

But know, thou noble youth, 
The serpent that did sting thy father's life 
Now wears his crown. 

Observe the sepulchral iteration : 
List, list, O, list ! 

and again, — 

Revenge his foul and most unnatural 
murder. 
Ham. Murder ! 
Ghost. Murder most foul, as in the best it is : 

But this most foul, strange, and unnatural. 

and again, — 

O horrible ! O horrible ! most horrible ! 
39 



A Review of Hamlet 



and still again, — 

Adieu, adieu ! Hamlet, remember me. 

Observe, too, how, just when the language 
mellows into mortal music, and the phan- 
tom threatens to become too intensely 
human, the torchlight of the supernatural 
comes slanting in: 

Hamlet, what a falling off was there ! 
From me whose love was of the dignity, 
That it went hand in hand even with the 

vow 

1 made to her in marriage ; and to decline 
Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were 

poor 
To those of mine. 

But virtue, as it never will be mov'd, 
Though lewdness court it in a shape of 

heaven ; 
So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd, 
Will sate itself in a celestial bed, 
And prey on garbage. 
But soft ! methinks I scent the morning 

air. 

4° 



A Review of Hamlet 



And still more exquisitely, — 

Fare thee well at once ! 
The glow-worm shows the matin to be 

near 
And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire. 

Observe, too, — and this is the most won- 
derful feature in all this wonderful business, 
— how true the spirit keeps to both its 
past and its present existence ; how doubly 
faithful to the world and to the grave : 

No reckoning made, but sent to my 

account 
With all my imperfections on my head. 



If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not. 
Let not the royal bed of Denmark be 
A couch for luxury and damned incest. 
But, howsoever thou pursu'st this act, 
Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul 

contrive 
Against thy mother aught : leave her to 

heaven, 

4 1 



A Review of Hamlet 



And to those thorns that in her bosom 

lodge, 
To prick and sting her. Fare thee well 

at once. 

How piteous, this chivalrous tenderness 
clinging even in the tomb to a lost, worth- 
less idol ! 

Amidst all the emotions with which 
Hamlet is simultaneously overwhelmed by 
the interview, the first to assert itself defi- 
nitely is pity. One brief appeal to heaven, 
earth, and hell, — one call on heart and 
sinews to bear him stiffly up, — then pity, 
pure and profound. And, at such a mo- 
ment, the capacity to pity reveals an almost 

infinite strength. 

Remember thee ! 
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat 
In this distracted globe — Remember thee ! 
Yea, from the table of my memory 
I '11 wipe away all trivial fond records 
That youth and observation copied there ; 
And thy commandment all alone shall live 
Within the book and volume of my brain, 
Unmixed with baser matter; yes, by heaven. 

42 



A Review of Hamlet 



Up to this point nothing can be saner. 
But just here, for a single second, his c dis- 
tracted ' brain gives way, as the vision of 
the c smiling, damned villain ' replaces that 
of the vanished ghost. 

O most pernicious woman ! 

villain, villain, smiling, damned villain. 
My tables, — meet it is I set it down, 

That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain ; 
At least I 'm sure it may be so in Denmark : 

( Writing.') 
So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word j 
It is, " Adieu, adieu ! remember me :" 

1 have sworn 't. 

Whatever may be thought of the words, 
the action — that doomed figure, crouching 
over its tables in the dim midnight, — is 
a flash of positive madness, brief as light- 
ning, but as terrible too. In this moment 
of supreme trial, his mind gives way : the 
remainder of the act is a struggle to restore 
the lost equilibrium. And in all the annals 
of tragedy, there is nothing half so fright- 
ful as this tremendous conflict of a godlike 

43 



A Review of Hamlet 



reason battling for its throne against Titanic 
terror and despair. Lear is comparatively 
an easy victim. The transition from se- 
nility to dotage, from dotage to frenzy, 
owing to its milder contrasts cannot be as 
appalling as the sharp conflict between 
mind in its morning splendor, and the 
hurricane eclipse of sudden lunacy. The 
first soliloquy revealed a predisposition to 
madness ; but here the man actually goes 
mad before our eyes — just as Lear goes 
mad before our eyes, save that instead of 
lapsing into fixed insanity like the old King, 
Hamlet emerges from the storm, radiant, 
calm, convalescent, victorious, but with a 
scar which he carries to his dying day. 

But will you call him weak because his 
reason sinks awhile beneath the double 
pressure of natural anguish and supernatu- 
ral terror ? Was Macbeth weak ? Yet, 
in his own lighted halls, how quite un- 
manned in folly one glimpse of the blood- 
boltered Banquo makes him. Not till the 
horrible shadow is gone, is Macbeth a man 

44 



A Review of Hamlet 



again ; not till the questionable shape that 
makes night hideous departs, does the 
braver soul of Hamlet betray its exhaus- 
tion ; and then only after a long sigh of 
pity! Was Richard weak? Yet in the 
milder midnight of his tent, how c the cold, 
fearful drops stand on his trembling flesh/ 
before those phantoms of a dream. 

By the apostle Paul, shadows to-night 
Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard, 
Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers 
Armed in proof, and led by shallow Richmond. 

Yet the shapes that awed those men of 
steel were but coinage of the brain ; unreal 
mockeries, all ; while Hamlet confronts, 
and confronts unappalled, a well-authenti- 
cated ghost — a ghost as visible to Horatio, 
Marcellus, and Bernardo, as to himself. 
Nor should his comparative sinlessness 
affect our estimate of their relative courage. 
The walking ghost of a murdered king, 
fresh from the glare of penal fires, swear- 
ing an only son to vengeance, must be 

45 



A Review of Hamlet 



quite as trying to the soul of innocence, 
as the chimeras of remorse to the nerves of 
guilt. If Hamlet's reason is momentarily 
dethroned, it is only to reassert its suprem- 
acy — only to pass triumphantly through 
the ordeal of delirious reaction. For that 
moment of madness has its sure sequel of 
delirium, — a delirium that could only 
have flowed from an antecedent moment 
of madness. The exhibition of this deli- 
rium is the crowning achievement of the 
Act, of the Play, — of all dramatic art. See 
how he staggers back with c wild and whirl- 
ing words ' from the perilous edges of 
madness ; see how dexterously, yet gro- 
tesquely, he baffles the pardonable curios- 
ity of his companions ; see how he jests 
and laughs over the sepulchral c Swear ! ' 
of the fellow in the cellarage, lest sheer 
horror should compel his friends to di- 
vulge their ghastly secret. 

Hor. My lord, my lord, — 

Mar. Lord Hamlet, — 

Hor. (Within^ Heaven secure him ! 

4 6 



A Review of Hamlet 



Mar. (Within.) So be it! 

Hor. (Within.) Illo, ho, ho, my lord ! 

Ham. Hillo, ho, ho, boy ! come, bird, come. 

Enter Horatio and Marcellus. 

Mar. How is 't my noble lord ? 
Hor. What news, my lord ? 

Ham. O wonderful ! 
Hor. Good my lord, tell it. 

Ham. No ; you '11 reveal it. 
Hor. Not I, my lord, by heaven. 
Mar. Nor I, my lord. 

Ham. How say you, then ; would heart of man 
once think it ? 
But you '11 be secret. 
Hor. Mar. Ay, by heaven, my lord. 

Ham. There f s ne'er a villain dwelling in all 
Denmark 
But he 's an arrant knave. 
Hor. There needs no ghost, my lord, come from 
the grave 
To tell us this. 
Ham. Why right ; you are i' the 

right ; 
And so, without more circumstance at all, 
I hold it fit that we shake hands and part : 
47 



A Review of Hamlet 



You, as your business and desire shall 

point you, 

For every man has business and desire, 

Such as it is : and for mine own poor part, 

Look you, I '11 go pray. 

Hor. These are but wild and whirling words, 

my lord. 

Ham. I 'm sorry they offend you, heartily ; 

Yes, faith, heartily. 

Hor. There 's no offence, my 

lord. 

Ham. Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, 
Horatio, 
And much offence too. Touching this 

vision here, 
It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you : 
For your desire to know what is between 

us, 
O'ermaster't as you may. And now, 

good friends, 
As you are friends, scholars and soldiers, 
Give me one poor request. 
Hor. What is 't, my lord ? We 

will. 
Ham. Never make known what you have seen 
to-night. 

48 



A Review of Hamlet 



Hor. Mar. My lord, we will not. 

Ham. Nay, but swear 't. 

Hor. In faith, 

My lord, not I. 
Mar. Nor I, my lord, in faith. 

Ham. Upon my sword. 
Mar. We have sworn, my lord, 

already. 
Ham. Indeed upon my sword, indeed. 
Ghost. ^Beneath.') Swear ! 

Ham. Ah, ha, boy ! say'st thou so ? art thou 
there, truepenny, 
Come on, — you hear this fellow in the 

cellarage. — 
Consent to swear. 
Hor. Propose the oath, my lord. 

Ham. Never to speak of this that you have seen, 

Swear by my sword. 
Ghost. {Beneath.) Swear. 

Ham. Hie et ubique? then we'll shift our 
ground. — 
Come hither, gentlemen, 
And lay your hands again upon my sword. 
Never to speak of this that you have 

heard, 
Swear by my sword. 
4 49 



A Review of Hamlet 



Ghost. (Beneath.) Swear. 

Ham. Well said, old Mole ! canst work i' the 
earth so fast ? — 

A worthy pioneer ! — Once more re- 
move, good friends. 
Hor. O day and night, but this is wondrous 

strange ! 
Ham. And therefore as a stranger give it wel- 
come. 

There are more things in heaven and 
earth, Horatio, 

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. 

But come : — 

Here, as before, never, so help you 
mercy, 

How strange or odd soe'er I bear my- 
self, — 

As I, perchance, hereafter shall think 
meet 

To put an antic disposition on, — 

That you, at such times seeing me, never 
shall, 

With arms encumbered thus, or this 
head-shake, 

Or by pronouncing of some doubtful 
phrase, 

5° 



A Review of Hamlet 



As " Well, well, we know " : or " We 

could an if we would "; 
Or "If we list to speak"; or "There 

be, an if they might " ; 
Or such ambiguous giving out, to note 
That you know aught of me : — this not 

to do, 
So grace and mercy at your most need 

help you. 
Swear. 
Ghost. {Beneath.) Swear. 

There is a purpose in all this minute 
precaution. One unwary syllable, one in- 
discreet hint of the apparition, and instead 
of becoming an avenger, the chances are 
that he will become a victim. As for now 
sweeping to revenge on wings as swift as 
meditation, or the thoughts of love, it is 
simply absurd. His mission is too vast 
and complicated to be solved in one fiery 
second ; his life is no longer merely conse- 
crated to woe, but summoned to a perilous 
and unwelcome duty. That grim, ocular 
demonstration of the existence of penal 

5i 



A Review of Hamlet 



fires, has clogged the impulse of human 
revenge with a salutary appreciation of 
eternal justice. The future is vague and 
hopeless, but, come what may, he means 
to be master of the situation. His man- 
ner must necessarily change, but he will 
mask the change with madness — an easy 
mask for one whose whole life is spent in 
holding real madness at bay, — whose rea- 
son would be lost in dark abysses of 
despair, but for the quenchless truth and 
splendor of an imagination which encircles 
and upholds him like an outstretched 
angel's wing. As if that one instant of 
aberration were providentially suggestive, 
c he plays/ as Coleridge observes, c that 
subtle trick of pretending to act the lunatic 
only when he is very near being what he 
pretends to act/ It is not the past, but a 
clear vision of the future, that extorts that 
prophetic sigh. 

The time is out of joint; O cursed spite 
That ever I was born to set it right. 

- 52 



A Review of Hamlet 



The inspiration of that sigh is Ophelia ; 
for, as we shall see, the gloom of that first 
soliloquy is not without its solitary ray 
of light. 

Now mark with what consummate art 
it happens, that on the very eve of that 
fearful midnight, — precisely as Hamlet 
is about to undergo the most appalling 
ordeal that ever man sustained, the tragic 
muse foreshadows another crowning sor- 
row for the doomed scion of Denmark. 
The fair Ophelia is made to flit before 
us, graceful, reticent, tender, — saying the 
very word that's wanted and nothing more; 
witty, high-bred, resolute — just such a lady 
as such a prince might love, 

— ' whose worth 
Stood challenger on mount of all the age 
For her perfections : ' 

a ' Rose of May ' that turned 

c to favour and to prettiness ' 
1 Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself.' 

53 



A Review of Hamlet 



What a lady she is ! How archly she 
turns the tables on her light-headed, loud- 
mouthed brother, in words as memorable 
as any in the play : 

But good my brother, 
Do not as some ungracious pastors do, 
Show me the steep and thorny way to 

heaven; 
Whilst, like a pufPd and reckless liber- 
tine, 
Himself the primrose path of dalliance 

treads, 
And recks not his own read. 
Laer. O fear me not, 

I stay too long. 

Too long, decidedly ; that home-thrust 
was sharper than the sword of Saladin. 
But observe how differently she encoun- 
ters her father; though infinitely more 
insulted and nettled by the broad sar- 
casms of the Premier, she never permits 
herself to be stirred an inch from maidenly 
dignity, or to violate the completest filial 
respect and obedience. 

54 



A Review of Hamlet 



Pol. What is 't Ophelia, he {Laertes) hath said 

to you ? 
Oph. So please you, something touching the 

Lord Hamlet. 
Pol. Marry, well bethought : 

'T is told me, he hath very oft of late 
Given private time to you ; and you your- 
self 
Have of our audience been most free and 
bounteous ; 

7& "3f V t& "Sp ~fe 

What is between you ? give me up the 
truth. 
Oph. He hath, my lord, of late, made many 
tenders 
Of his affection for me. 
Pol. A flection ! pooh ! you speak like a green 

g irl , 
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance. 

Do you believe his tenders as you call 

them ! — 

Opb a I do not know my lord what I should 
think. 

Pol. Marry, I '11 teach you ; think yourself a 

baby ; 

55 



A Review of Hamlet 



That you have ta'en these tenders for 

true pay, 
Which are not sterling. Tender your- 
self more dearly ; 

Or you '11 tender me a fool. 

Oph. My lord, he hath importuned me with 
love 
In honourable fashion. 
Pol. Ay, fashion you may call it ; go to, go to. 
Oph. And hath given countenance to his speech, 
my lord, 
With almost all the holy vows of heaven. 
Pol. Ay, springes to catch woodcocks — 

— From this time 
Be somewhat scanter of your maiden 

presence ; 
Set your entreatments at a higher rate — 
Than a command to parley. 



This is for all. 

I would not) in plain terms, from this time 

forth, 
Have you so slander any moment's leisure, 
As to give words or talk with the Lord 

Hamlet. 
Look to 't, I charge you : come your ways. 
Oph. I shall obey, my lord. 

56 



A Review of Hamlet 



Observe that it is of late he hath given 
private time to her ; of late he hath made 
many tenders of his affection ; so that in 
spite of the first soliloquy, in spite of his 
wish to return to Wittenberg, it may fairly 
be inferred that elastic youth was striving 
to repair its first great sorrow, with its 
first great love, — that the c cursed spite I ' 
is not the lament of a laggard, but of a 
lover. And, as he proudly rallies from 
the agonies of that eventful midnight, 
asserting a quiet mastery, not only over 
his two friends, but over the impatient 
Ghost, our hearts bleed for him, as we 
think of the blow that Polonius is stealthily 
preparing. 

So much has been said about the vacil- 
lation and procrastination of this much 
misrepresented Prince, that one would 
suppose the action of the Play consumed 
a year or two. Let us endeavor to fix 
the extent of his loitering. 

The First Act occupies exactly twenty- 
four hours. The interval between the 

57 



A Review of Hamlet 



First and Second Acts is less easily deter- 
mined. Hamlet himself is scarcely an au- 
thority as to time ; his indignant rhetoric 
openly disclaims fidelity to arithmetic. 
First, his father had been c two months 
dead ' when his mother re-married, then 
c not two? then c within a month/ c a little 
month — ' and finally less than c two hours/ 
But the reiteration of the same numeral is 
something ; and Ophelia lets us know, in 
the Third Act, that it is then just c Twice 
two months ' since the regicide. So, allow- 
ing a two months* widowhood to the 
Queen, and counting some weeks or days 
between the second marriage and the first 
appearance of the spectre, we have less 
than two months, as the interval between 
the Acts and the measure of Hamlet's de- 
lay — the only delay with which he can be 
rationally reproached, since after the killing 
of Polonius he was a State prisoner. 

The First and Second Acts, however, 
are so inseparably linked in horror by 
Ophelia's terrible picture of her interview 

58 



A Review of Hamlet 



with her discarded lover, that it is difficult 
to escape the impression that Hamlet 
stalked straight from the haunted plat- 
form into her chamber. 

Pol. How now, Ophelia ! What 's the matter ? 
Oph. Alas, my lord, I have been so affrighted ! 
Pol. With what, i' the name of God ? 
Oph. My lord, as I was sewing in my chamber, 
Lord Hamlet, — with his doublet all un- 

brac'd, — 
No hat upon his head ; his stockings 

foul'd, 
Ungarter'd and down-gyved to his ankle ; 
Pale as his shirt ; his knees knocking each 

other ; 
And with a look so piteous in purport 
As if he had been loosed out from hell 
To speak of horrors, — he comes before 
me. 
Pol. Mad for thy love ? 
Oph. My lord, I do not know ; 

But truly I do fear it. 
Pol. What said he ? 

Oph. He took me by the wrist and held me hard ; 
Then goes he to the length of all his arm; 
59 



A Review of Hamlet 



And with his other hand thus o'er his brow, 
He falls to such perusal of my face 
As he would draw it. Long stay'd he so ; 
At last, — a little shaking of mine arm, 
And thrice his head thus waving up and 

down, — 
He rais'd a sigh so piteous and profound 
That it did seem to shatter all his bulk, 
And end his being : that done, he lets me 

g° 
And, with his head over his shoulders 

turn'd, 
He seem'd to find his way without his 

eyes, 
For out o' doors he went without their 

help, 
And, to the last, bended their light on me. 

We are not permitted to see Hamlet in 
this c ecstacy of love/ But what a picture ! 
What vivid detail ! What awful light and 
shade ! How he must have loved her, 
that love should bring him to such a pass ? 
his knees knocking each other ? — knees 
that had firmly followed a beckoning ghost, 
now scarce able to bear him to his Mistress* 

60 



A Review of Hamlet 



chamber ! There is more than the love 
of forty thousand brothers in that hard 
grasp of the wrist — in that long gaze at 
arms' length — in the force that might, but 
will not, draw her nearer ! And never a 
word from this king of words ! His first 
great silence — the second is death ! They 
may meet again — meet a thousand times 
— meet to-morrow, or next day, or the 
day after ; but with the open grave of their 
dead love between them forevermore ! 
The cause of this despair is palpable : 

Pol. What ! have you given him any hard words 

of late ? 
Oph. No, my good lord ; but, as you did com- 
mand, 
I did repel his letters and denied 
His access to me. 

So that in the interval between those acts, 
he has sought her more than once ; she 
has repelled his letters — plural. Yet he 
could only have sought her to whisper 
some sad parting, for he knew that he was 

61 



A Review of Hamlet 



doomed ! Perhaps he may have dreamed 
of finding counsel in her eyes — of resting 
that tormented forehead for the last time 
on her knees ! Instead of this, the doors 
are closed against him ! Dismissed, for- 
saken, just as the glance of a fond woman's 
eye, the touch of a true woman's hand, 
was most needed ! Was it not enough 
to madden him ? Was it not enough to 
turn him mercilessly against the sly old 
trimmer whose finger he detected in the 
transaction — whom he must always have 
detested as his uncle's Premier, had he 
not been Ophelia's father? Would he 
have been mortal, would he have been a 
lover, had he not hated Polonius ? And 
yet when they next meet, we are startled 
by the savage flash of a scorn, for which 
we are unprepared only because the grand 
Master has not deigned to re-state the 
provocation. 

This is one of the most amusing of 
Hamlet's engagements. How confidently 

the veteran sails into action ! — 

62 



A Review of Hamlet 



Pol. At such a time I '11 loose my daughter to 
him : 
Be you and I behind an arras then ; 
Mark the encounter ; if he love her not, 
And be not from his reason fall'n thereon, 
Let me be no assistant for a state, 
But keep a farm and carters. 
King. We will try it. 

Queen. But look where sadly the poor wretch 

comes reading. 
Pol. Away, I do beseech you, both away : 

I'll board him presently : — O, give me 
leave. 

{Exeunt King, Queen and Attendants.) 
Enter Hamlet reading. 

How does my good Lord Hamlet ? 

Ham. Well, God-a-mercy. 

Pol. Do you know me, my lord ? 

Ham. Excellent, excellent well ; you are a fish- 
monger. 

Pol. Not I, my lord. 

Ham. Then I would you were so honest a man. 

Pol. Honest, my lord ! 

Ham. Ay, sir ; to be honest, as this world goes, 
is to be one man picked out of ten 
thousand. 

63 



A Review of Hamlet 



Pol. That 's very true, my lord. 

Ham. For if the sun breed maggots in a dead 
dog, being a god kissing carrion, — 
Have you a daughter ? 

Pol. I have, my lord. 

Ham. Let her not walk i' the sun : conception 
is a blessing ; but not as your daughter 
may conceive ; friend, look to 't. 

Pol. How say you by that ? \_dside.~] Still 
harping on my daughter : — yet he 
knew me not at first ; he said I was a 
fishmonger : he is far gone, far gone : 
and truly in my youth I suffered 
much extremity for love ; very near 
this. I '11 speak to him again. What 
do you read, my lord ? 

Ham. Words, words, words ! 

Pol. What is the matter, my lord ? 

Ham. Between who ? 

Pol. I mean, the matter that you read, my 
lord. 

Ham. Slanders, sir : for the satirical rogue 
says here, that old men have grey 
beards ; that their faces are wrinkled ; 
their eyes purging thick amber and 
plum-tree gum ; and that they have a 

6 4 



A Review of Hamlet 



plentiful lack of wit, together with 
most weak hams: all of which, sir, 
though I most powerfully and potently 
believe, yet I hold it not honesty to 
have it thus set down ; for you your- 
self, sir, should be old as I am, if like 
a crab, you could go backward. 

Pol. {Aside.) Though this be madness, yet there 
is method in 't. — 
Will you walk out of the air, my lord ? 

Ham. Into my grave ? 

Pol. Indeed, that is out o' the air. {Aside.) 
How pregnant sometimes his replies 
are ! A happiness that often madness 
hits on, which reason and sanity could 
not so prosperously be delivered of. 
I will leave him, and suddenly con- 
trive the means of meeting between 
him and my daughter. — My honour- 
able lord, I will most humbly take 
my leave of you. 

Ham. You cannot, sir, take from me anything 
that I will more willingly part withal, 
— except my life, except my life, 
except my life. 

Pol. Fare you well, my lord. 

Ham. These tedious old fools ! 
5 65 



A Review of Hamlet 



This is pitiless. But there is nothing so 
insufferable to a lofty and morbidly acute 
intelligence in its prime, as the devices of 
a wily, aggressive old age — the c slyness 
blinking through the watery eye of super- 
annuation.' Yet, with all his drivel, the 
ancient diplomat is no despicable antago- 
nist: he is still an overmatch for most men. 
Though on a false trail now, there is no 
telling when he may strike the true one. 
He is c too busy,' and that alone is c some 
danger/ Still, we could hardly forgive 
the grim delight with which Hamlet lashes 
the bewildered and discomfited politician, 
were it not for that triple wail, ' except my 
life, except my life, except my life ! ' This 
arrests our sympathy just as it is about to 
side with Polonius, by reminding us of the 
insignificance of the pain the prince inflicts 
when weighed against the torture he en- 
dures. The Premier's advance of Rosen- 
crantz and Guildenstern to cover his own 
retreat, is exceedingly humorous. 



66 



A Review of Hamlet 



Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. 
Pol. You go to seek the Lord Hamlet ; there 
he is : — [accented just as if he had 
said, 
You go to seek the devil ; there he is /] — 

{Exit Polonius.) 

Through Rosencrantz and Guildenstern 
Hamlet is presented to us under his sub- 
tlest intellectual aspects. These two young 
gentlemen have been summoned to Court, 
and delicately commissioned to c draw out ' 
Hamlet, and gather the secret cause of his 
affliction ; in consideration whereof they 
are to receive such thanks as fits a King s 
remembrance. They had been brought up 
with him, c neighbour'd to his youth and 
humour/ old schoolmates and friends ; yet, 
at the first intimation of their royal mas- 
ter, they cheerfully sink into paid spies. 
In their very first interview at Court, they 
display a talent for self-abasement. 

Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern. 
Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz. 

67 



A Review of Hamlet 



They are bought up, body and soul, and 
the Queen says amen to the bargain. 

Hamlet, though entirely ignorant of the 
transaction, is instinctively on his guard, 
and divines their mission at sight. 

The best and most characteristic por- 
tion of the scene, one of the finest in the 
Play, is omitted in the Quarto — another 
indication, we think, that the Quarto was 
from an earlier version, and that we must 
regard the Folio as the standard. For, in 
this omitted passage, two essential points 
are introduced ; namely, Hamlet's total 
lack of ambition, and the circumstance of 
his having servants of his own ; which lat- 
ter fact would facilitate his fitting out or 
engaging a privateer, or negotiating with 
Fortinbras to intercept his voyage to Eng- 
land — a point to be considered presently. 

Guild. Mine honour' d lord. 

Ros. My most dear lord. 

Ham. My excellent good friends! How dost 

thou, Guildenstern ? Ah, Rozencrantz ! 

Good lads, how do ye both ? 
68 



A Review of Hamlet 



Very genial in expression ; but instead of 
giving them his hand, he institutes a cross- 
examination. 

Ham. What 's the matter ? 

Ros. Nothing, my lord, but that the world 's 

grown honest. 
Ham. Then is doom's-day near : but your news 
is not true. 

The Quarto is silent here ; the Folio pro- 
ceeds, — - 

Let me question more in particular : 
What have you, my good friends, de- 
served at the hands of fortune that 
she sends you to prison hither ? 

Guild. Prison, my lord ? 

Ham. Denmark's a prison. 

Ros. Then is the world one. 

Ham. A goodly one; in which there are many 
confines, wards and dungeons, Den- 
mark being one o' the worst. 

Ros. We think not so, my lord. 

Ham. Why then 't is none to you ; for there is 
nothing either good or bad, but think- 
ing makes it so : to me it is a prison. 

6 9 



A Review of Hamlet 



Ros. Why then your ambition makes it one; 
'tis too narrow for your mind. 

Ham. O God, I could be bounded in a nut- 
shell, and count myself a king of infi- 
nite space, were it not that I have had 
bad dreams. 

Guild. Which dreams indeed are ambition ; for 
the very substance of the ambitious is 
merely the shadow of a dream. 

Ham. A dream itself is but a shadow. 

Ros. Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy 
and light a quality, that it is but a 
shadow's shadow. 

Ham. Then are our beggars bodies, and our 
monarchs and outstretch'd heroes the 
beggars' shadows. Shall we go to the 
Court ? for by my fay, I cannot 
reason. 

Ros., Guild. We '11 wait upon you. 

Ham. No such matter : I will not sort you 
with the rest of my servants ; for, to 
speak to you like an honest man, I 
am most dreadfully attended. 

How vainly, yet how persistently, they en- 
deavor to convict him of ambition ! How 

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A Review of Hamlet 



superbly he disclaims ! He is King already ! 
King wherever reason may clamber, wher- 
ever imagination may soar ! Monarch of 
all the realms of earth, and air, and ocean ! 
Emperor of infinite space ! What cares 
he for the crown of Denmark ? He never 
once alludes to its loss, save in that final 
summing up against his uncle; and then 
only as an item on the side of c perfect 
conscience ' : — 

He that hath 



Popped in between the election and my hopes. 

His insecure, uninfluential, beggared posi- 
tion at Court, is only glanced at in excuse 
for not being better able to serve his 
friends : once at the end of the First Act, 

And what so poor a man as Hamlet is 

May do to express his love and friending to you 

God willing, shall not lack : — 

and twice in the scene we are now examin- 
ing. 

Hamlet's reply to Rosencrantz, c Then 
71 



A Review of Hamlet 



are our beggars bodies,* etc., is far from 
clear ; but it seems to mean, ' Then are our 
beggars ' (who have no ambition) c bodies, 
and our monarchs and outstretched heroes ' 
(who having ambition, are therefore nobodies) 
c but the beggars' shadows/ 

The Quarto and Folio now proceed in 
unison. How finely the Prince plucks 
out the heart of their mystery ! How 
they blush, and quail, and stammer, be- 
neath his eye ! 

Ham. But in the beaten way of friendship, what 
make you at Elsinore ? 

Ros. To visit you, my lord : no other occasion. 

Ham. Beggar that I am, I am even poor in 
thanks ; but I thank you : and sure, 
dear friends, my thanks are too dear, a 
halfpenny. Were you not sent for ? 
is it your own inclining ? Is it a free 
visitation ? Come, deal justly with 
me : come, come ; nay, speak. 

Guild. What should we say, my lord ? 

Ham. Anything — but to the purpose. You 
were sent for ; and there is a kind 
of confession in your looks, which 
72 



A Review of Hamlet 



your modesties have not craft enough 
to colour: I know, the good king and 
queen have sent for you. 

Ros. To what end, my lord ? 

Ham. That you must teach me. But let me 
conjure you, by the rights of our fel- 
lowship, by the consonancy of our 
youth, by the obligation of our ever 
preserv'd love, and by what more dear 
a better purposer could charge you 
withal, be even and direct with me, 
whether you were sent for, or no ? 

Ros. What say you ? ( To Guildenstern.) 

Ham. Nay then I have an eye of you ; (aside) 
if you love me, hold not off. 

Guild. My lord, we were sent for. 

Ham. I will tell you why j so shall my antici- 
pation prevent your discovery, and 
your secrecy to the king and queen 
moult no feather. I have of late (but 
wherefore I know not) lost all my 
mirth, foregone all custom of ex- 
ercises : and indeed it goes so heavily 
with my disposition, that this goodly 
frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile 
promontory ; this most excellent can- 
73 



A Review of Hamlet 



opy, the air, look you, this brave o'er- 
hanging firmament, this majestical roof 
fretted with golden fire, why, it ap- 
pears no other thing to me, than a 
foul and pestilent congregation of va- 
pours. What a piece of work is man! 
How noble in reason ! how infinite in 
faculties ! in form and moving, how 
express and admirable ! in action how 
like an angel ! in appearance, how like 
a god ! the beauty of the world ! the 
paragon of animals ! And yet, to me, 
what is this quintesscence of dust ? 
Man delights not me, nor woman 
neither ; though by your smiling you 
seem to say so. 

Ros. My lord, there is no such stuff in my 
thoughts. 

Ham. Why did you laugh, then, when I said, 
Man delights not me ? 

Ros. To think, my lord, if you delight not in 
man, what lenten entertainment the 
players shall receive from you : we 
coted them on the way ; and hither 
are they coming to offer you service. 

Ham. He that plays the king shall be welcome; 

74 



A Review of Hamlet 



his majesty shall have tribute of me: 
the adventurous knight shall use his 
foil and target : the lover shall not 
sigh gratis ; the humorous man shall 
end his part in peace ; the clown 
shall make those laugh whose lungs 
are tickled o' the sere ; and the lady 
shall say her mind freely, or the blank 
verse shall halt for 't. What players 
are they ? 

Ros. Even those you were wont to take de- 
light in, the tragedians of the city. 

Ham. How chances it they travel ? Their 
residence both in reputation and profit 
was better, both ways. 

Ros, I think their inhibition comes by means 
of the late innovation. 

Ham. Do they hold the same estimation they 
did, when I was in the city ? Are 
they so followed ? 

Ros. No, indeed, they are not 

Ham. It is not strange ; for mine uncle is King 
of Denmark; and those that would 
make mowes at him while my father 
lived, give twenty, forty, fifty, an hun- 
dred ducats a-piece, for his picture in 
75 



A Review of Hamlet 



little. 'Sblood, there is something in 
this more than natural, if philosophy 
could find it out. 

{Flourish of trumpets within.) 

Observe that it is only under protest, 
and the compulsion of etiquette, that Ham- 
let finally offers his hand. 

Guild. There are the players. 

Ham. Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsi- 
nore. Your hands, come. The ap- 
purtenance of welcome is fashion and 
ceremony, let me comply with you in 
this garb, lest my extent to the play- 
ers, which I tell you, must show 
fairly outward, should appear more 
like entertainment than yours. You 
are welcome, but my uncle-father and 
aunt-mother are deceived. 

Guild. In what, my dear lord ? 

Ham. I am but mad north-northwest : when 
the wind is southerly I know a hawk 
from a handsaw. 

What a fine mixture of scorn and humor, 
and old academic tenderness ! It suggests 

76 



A Review of Hamlet 



Ivanhoe's raising his lance to De Grant- 
mesnil. He has already practically for- 
given them. They are schoolmates again, 
for the nonce, as he leans between them 
— c at each ear a hearer/ with his back to 
Polonius. 

Pol. Well be with you, gentlemen. 

Ham. Hark you, Guildenstern ; and you too, 

at each ear a hearer. That great 

baby you see there, is not yet out of 

his swathing-clouts. 
Ros. Haply, he's the second time come to 

them ; for they say an old man is 

twice a child. 
Ham. I will prophesy he comes to tell me of 

the players ; mark it. You say right, 

sir : Monday morning ; 't was so, 

indeed. 
Pol. My lord, I have news to tell you. 
Ham. My lord, I have news to tell you. 

When Roscius was an actor at Rome, — 
Pol. The actors have come hither, my lord. 
Ham. Buz, buz ! 
Pol. Upon my honour, — 
Ham. Then came each actor on his ass, — 

77 



A Review of Hamlet 



Pol. The best actors in the world, either for 
tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral- 
comical, historical-pastoral, scene in- 
dividable, or poem unlimited : Seneca 
cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too 
light. For the law of writ, and the 
liberty, these are the only men. 

Ham. O Jephthah, Judge of Israel, — what a 
treasure hadst thou ! 

Pol. What a treasure had he my lord ? 

Ham. Why — one fair daughter and no more, 
The which he loved passing well. 

Pol. Still on my daughter. (Aside.) 

Ham. Am I not i' the right, old Jephthah ? 

This ominous insinuation was going a step 
too far ; and a twinge of self-reproach may 
have prompted the warning to the First 
Player, c Follow that lord ; and look you mock 
him not.' No unnecessary warning, for that 
First Player's eye had been on Polonius 
with malice aforethought ever since the 
Premier's 

c That 's good : mobled queen is good ! ' 
78 



A Review of Hamlet 



But all this while Hamlet has been 
silently planning his Mousetrap. 

Ham. Can you play the murder of Gon- 

zago ? 

First Player. Ay, my lord. 

Ham. We'll ha't to-morrow night. You 

could, for a need, study a speech 
of some dozen or sixteen lines, 
which I would set down and 
insert in 't, could you not ? 

First Player. Ay, my lord. {Exit First Player.) 

{Exeunt Ros. and Guild.) 

Ham. Now I am alone ! 

With what fierce delight he hails the mo- 
ment ! His fingers are itching for his 
sword hilt ! His rage must have vent, 
or it will kill him. Maddened by the 
forced delay, he turns on himself like a 
scorpion walled with fire. 

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I ! 
Is it not monstrous that this Player here, 
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, 
Could force his soul so to his own conceit, 

79 



A Review of Hamlet 



That, from her working, all his visage warm'd j 

Tears in his eyes, distraction in 's aspect, 

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting, 

With forms, to his conceit ? and all for nothing ? 

For Hecuba ? 

What 's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, 

That he should weep for her ? What would 

he do, 
Had he the motive and the cue for passion, 
That I have ? He would drown the stage with 

tears, 
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech, 
Make mad the guilty and appal the free ; 
Confound the ignorant, and amaze, indeed, 
The very faculties of ears and eyes. 
Yet I, 

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak, 
Like John-a-dreams, impregnant of my cause, 
And can say nothing. No, not for a King, 
Upon whose property and most dear life 
A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward ? 
Who calls me villain, breaks my pate across, 
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face ? 
Tweaks me by th' nose, gives me th' lie i' th' 

throat, 
As deep as to the lungs ? Who does me this ? 

80 



A Review of Hamlet 



Yet I should take it — for it cannot be, 

But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall 

To make oppression bitter ; or, ere this, 

I should have fatted all the region kites 

With this slave's offal. Bloody, bawdy villain ! 

Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless 

villain ! 
O vengeance ! 

The instant the fit is over, he despises his 
frenzy. 

Why, what an ass am I ? This is most brave, 
That I, the son of a dear father murder'd, 
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, 

Must 

fall a-cursing, like a very drab, 
A scullion ! 
Fie upon 't ! foh ! 

It is true, that Hamlet is constitutionally 
averse to violence ; that he is not 'splenitive 
and rash ; ' that he c lacks gall to make 
oppression bitter ; ' that his weakness and 
his melancholy c have increased his apathy 
to all things, even to revenge ; ' that he 



A Review of Hamlet 



habitually exhibits that chronic antipathy 
to action which accompanies extreme ner- 
vous depression. But as for cowardice ? — 
from such cowards defend us heaven ! Once 
roused, he never sets his life at a pin's fee : 
the c something dangerous ' becomes some- 
thing terrible. There is not a hero in 
Shakespeare — Macbeth, with harness on 
his back, — Lear, with his good, biting fal- 
chion, — Othello, with that little arm up- 
lifted, — ay, even Richard, when a thousand 
hearts are great within his bosom — who 
would not quail before the Berserker wrath 
of this Viking's son ! — while, in the blaze 
of his dazzling irony, Falstaff himself 
would shrivel up into Slender? 

But it is time to explain the true causes 
of Hamlet's delay. He is not merely the 
heir of a swift revenge but the princely 
representative of a c cause and a name,' 
which must be reported aright to the un- 
satisfied. How could he then kill the King 
without passing for a common cutthroat? 
Shall the annals of Denmark be allowed 

82 



A Review of Hamlet 



to perpetuate his uncle as a martyr and 
himself as an assassin ? He more than 
half believed the Ghost's story, and hence 
his vehement self-accusal ; but to proceed 
to extremities, without corroborate testi- 
mony, would have been both a crime and 
a blunder. We want no farther proof: 
we are initiated spectators, and have full 
faith in the word of the majestic apparition. 
But were we called upon to act as Hamlet 
was, we should think twice before we as- 
tonished our friends in particular and man- 
kind in general by exterminating a royal 
uncle at the special private request of the 
ghost of a defunct Paterfamilias. What- 
ever may have been Hamlet's shortcom- 
ings, he was distinctly not a fool. And it 
is impossible to conceive any better, swifter 
or surer way of accomplishing his compli- 
cated mission than by that very assumption 
of lunacy on the one hand, and the expedi- 
ent of the Interlude on the other. The 
first would mitigate the verdict of posterity 
if sudden fury should goad him into pre- 

83 ' 



A Review of Hamlet 



mature assault, as happened once and nearly 
twice ; the second, by startling the King 
into some word or gesture of self-betrayal, 
would serve to justify or palliate a more 
deliberate revenge. Public verification — 
human testimony to the truth — of that 
ghostly charge was not to be obtained in a 
day or an hour. Hamlet seized the very 
first opportunity that offered : and it re- 
quired both consummate ingenuity and 
consummate daring to devise and carry out 
the expedient. Away with idle words and 
cursing like a scullion ! 

About my brain! I have heard 
That guilty creatures sitting at a play, 
Have by the very cunning of the scene 
Been struck so to the soul, that presently 
They have proclaimed their malefactions ; 
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak 
With most miraculous organ. I '11 have these 

players 
Play something like the murder of my father 
Before mine uncle : I '11 observe his looks ; 
I '11 tent him to the quick : if he but blench, 

84 



A Review of Hamlet 



I know my course. The spirit that I have seen 
May be the devil : and the devil hath power 
To assume a pleasing shape ; yea, and perhaps 
Out of my weakness and my melancholy 
(As he is very potent with such spirits,) 
Abuses me to damn me : I '11 have grounds 
More relative than this : — the play 's the thing 
Wherein I '11 catch the conscience of the king. 

But there is a spiritual necessity for re- 
tarded instead of precipitate action. That 
smiling damned villain is a fascination : it 
would be a mistake to slay him out of hand : 
the joy of one sharp second is nothing to 
the delight of watching him, day by day, 
unconsciously moving nearer to his doom. 
Had the King a thousand lives, to take 
them one by one were less enjoyment 
than the revelry of deepening hatred, the 
luxury of listening to the far music of the 
forging bolt. Who has not recognized, in 
some degree, the charm of the suspended 
claw, or comprehended the stern joy of the 
lion in his lair? The crimes of this scep- 
tered fratricide are stale : the murdered 

85 



A Review of Hamlet 



man is dust : his widow old in incest : there 
is no fresh, living horror to clamor for 
instant retribution. Indeed there is no 
adequate retribution possible, except such 
as the soul of the Avenger can find in sat- 
urating itself with the spectacle of its victim. 
The naked fact of killing the King would 
be poor revenge save as the climax of ante- 
cedent torture, — not physical, but mental 
and spiritual torture. For when mind and 
heart are outraged, they seek to be avenged 
in kind. To haunt that guilty court like 
a spectre ; to hang destruction by a hair 
above the throne ; to wean his mother from 
her low cleaving ; to vex the state with 
turbulent and dangerous lunacy ; to make 
that sleek usurper quail and cower in every 
conflict ; to lash him with unsparing scorn ; 
to foil him at every turn ; to sting him to 
a new crime ; to drag him from his throne, 
a self-convicted felon, and, ultimately, with 
one crowning sword-thrust to make all even, 
— this is the nearest approach to atonement 
of which the case is susceptible. 

86 



A Review of Hamlet 



But the impulse of conscience, as well 
as of nature, was against a precipitate, head- 
long assault. Hamlet is represented not 
only as a prince and a man, but as a Chris- 
tian; and as a Christian he may be par- 
doned, even at this day, for being partially 
influenced by his faith. The manifest 
Christian duty under the circumstance was 
forgiveness : there is no such word as 
revenge in the lexicon of Calvary. Tried 
by the Christian standard, the very poor- 
est revenge he could take would be to send 
his own soul helplessly after his sire's just 
for the sake of shortening the life and 
accelerating the perdition of one who was 
pretty sure in due season to damn himself. 

The classics have so profoundly pagan- 
ized our tastes, that our secret wish is, not 
that he should shut both ears to the vin- 
dictive whispers of a questionable shape, but 
that he should finish up the matter like a 
man and play the executioner with less 
mouthing. But Hamlet is not c the passion 
puppet of fate, but the representative of an 

87 



A Review of Hamlet 



august wiir (De ^uincey). Free will and 
conscience both rebel at this dictation of 
the grave, this super-position of destiny. 
The soul immortal as itself consents to 
follow the phantom so far, but no farther; 
and although sorely tempted to aggression, 
remains virtually defensive to the end, ex- 
pectant of the mediation of Providence 
but disdaining the compulsion of destiny. 

There 's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
Rough-hew them how we may. 

The power referred to is God, not fate. 
Even before that glance beyond the grave, 
that verification of penal fire, he respects 
the c canon 'gainst self-slaughter/ On 
meeting the ghost, his first ejaculation is a 
prayer, 

Angels and ministers of grace defend us, 

just as afterward in the interview with the 
Queen, 

Save me and hover o'er me with your wings, 
You heavenly guards ! 

88 



A Review of Hamlet 



The surmise that the spirit he has seen 
may be the devil, and that the devil hath 
power to assume a pleasing shape, so far 
from being an overnice after-scruple, is his 
first misgiving. 

Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd, 
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from 

hell ; 
Be thy intents wicked or charitable, 
Thou com'st in such a questionable shape 
That I will speak to thee. 

Questionable from the first. And even 
after his love and pity are fully enlisted, 
he cannot banish that grim suspicion of 
diablerie, 

O all you host of heaven ! O earth ! What else ? 
And shall I couple hell ? 

c So art thou to revenge when thou 
shalt hear/ is hardly the language of a soul 
in Purgatory, the sphere to which the 
spirit professes to belong. He cannot 
divest himself of the darker supposal : 

89 



A Review of Hamlet 



He took my father grossly, full of bread ; 
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May ; 
And how his audit stands, who knows saw, 

heav'n ? 
But, in our circumstance and course of thought 
'Tis heavy with him. 

So that although the fear of the worst 
deepens and intensifies his wrath, he can- 
not, without more or less misgiving, 
wholly abandon himself to a revenge 
prompted, as he says, by hell as well as 
heaven. 

It is precisely this influence of faith, and 
this consequent confusion of purpose, that 
lends such a deep, uncertain, unfathomable 
interest to the Play. The human, at its 
best, is beautiful, as well as the divine ; and 
most especially attractive when enriched 
with just so much of the divine as enters 
into the composition of your average Chris- 
tian. A Christian rarely presents the same 
harmonious front to fate which the antique 
not only permitted, but exacted. When 
the grave is the consummation, the absolute 

90 



A Review of Hamlet 



finale of existence, except as a dim shade, 
it is comparatively easy to round the heroic 
evenly and symmetrically up to that mar- 
gin. But when death is the door to vaster 
spheres and wider experiences, when this 
little life is but the prelude to unending 
futurities of infinite bliss or infinite despair, 
the deeper faith should find its echo in 
deeper art. In Hamlet, as in Faust, more 
grandly, though less avowedly, the immor- 
tal weal or woe of a human soul is at stake ; 
and we catch ourselves listening for the 
spirit voices at the end, 

1 He is judged ! ' — c He is saved ! ' 

It is precisely here that he explains him- 
self in that marvellous monologue which 
fills the heart of this troubled symphony 
with an Adagio of calm, infinite, unearthly 
beauty. From the first, Hamlet neither 
cared for nor expected to survive his re- 
venge. c To be or not to be, is not a ques- 
tion of suicide, but of sacrifice. He must 
perish with his victim ; there is no escape. 

9 1 



A Review of Hamlet 



He is ready ! For his body he recks not ; 
better thaw and resolve itself into a dew. 
But his mind ? Life had still one delight 
for this c fellow of Wittenberg ' — the in- 
exhaustible splendor of his own mind> the 
glory and majesty of thought, the ecstasy 
of perfect expression. It was his vocation, 
his genius, his supreme happiness, to 
think, to speak, to imagine. He enjoys 
the play of his sovereign reason, as the 
horse of the desert enjoys the play of its 
arching neck and flying mane, — as the 
eagle enjoys its pinions while fanning the 
sun, — as all things divinely beautiful enjoy 
their own manifestations. Love itself, 
though his nature is exceptionally tender, 
is but a secondary transport to the rapture 
of eloquence. What wonder that he clings 
to the lighted torch of such an intelligence ! 
What wonder that he strives to bear it un- 
extinguished through the whirlwinds that 
sweep the dark passes between time and 
eternity! And yet he would gladly sur- 
render this beautiful mind to the quietus 

92 



A Review of Hamlet 



of final and complete extinction : it is only 
the distortion of the dreams that haunt the 
sleep of death that gives him pause. 

To die, — to sleep, — 
No more ; and by a sleep to say we end 
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks 
That flesh is heir to, — 'tis a consummation 
Devoutly to be wished. To die, — to sleep ; — 
To sleep ! perchance to dream : ay, there 's the 

rub; 
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, 
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, 
Must give us pause. 

Still less will he force a lawless passage into 
that 

c undiscover'd country from whose bourn 
No traveller returns,' 

even for an enterprise of great pith and 
moment. c The dread of something after 
death* 



puzzles the will, 



And makes us rather bear those ills we have 
Than fly to others that we know not of, 

93 



A Review of Hamlet 



Thus conscience does make cowards of us all ; 

And thus the native hue of resolution 

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. 

But apart from all these motives and rea- 
sons for delay, Hamlet could afford to wait. 
In the first place, he was personally safe in 
waiting : 

c He 's lov'd of the distracted multitude/ 

to such an extent that the King dare not 
' put the strong law on him :' 

' The queen, his mother, 



Lives almost by his looks : ' 

' the great love the general gender bear 



him' 

is such that the royal arrows, 

'Too lightly timber' d for so loud a mind 
Would have reverted to the bow again 
And not where they were aimed.' 

There is a vulgar impression, owing 
perhaps to the usual insignificance of stage 
royalty, that the King was constantly at 

94 



A Reviezv of Hamlet 



Hamlet's mercy : whereas, but for Hamlet's 
personal prowess and popularity, the case 
must have been exactly the reverse. As it 
is, he haunts that guilty palace, pacing the 
lobby four hours together : as it is, ever 
since Laertes went into France, he has 
been in continual practice with his rapier. If 
suddenly assailed, he is sure of a chance to 
use it — once at least. Always on guard, 
always vigilant, always armed ; reckless 
and irresistible in his wrath ; masked by 
lunacy and shielded by popular and mater- 
nal affection, he felt more than a match for 
the utmost cunning of the King. Young, 
unadvised, inexperienced ; the representa- 
tive of the better genius of Denmark ; with 
national interests to regard as well as indi- 
vidual wrong9 to redress ; watched by an 
intriguing statesman ; worried by a brace 
of friends turned spies ; discarded by the 
lady of his love ; bent on the reformation 
of his mother as well as on the chastisement 
of her wretched spouse ; passive because 
uncertain whether his mission is from de- 

95 



A Review of Hamlet 



mon or divinity, yet equal to all odds and 
any emergency ; there is no grander figure 
in fable or history than Hamlet, Prince of 
Denmark. 

The Second Act was a lull, after the 
storm of the First : the Third Act, begin- 
ning only one day later, is an unin- 
terrupted procession of events, moving 
swiftly and sternly on to their terrible 
consummation. Polonius is setting an- 
other snare, and baiting it with Ophelia. 
Hamlet has been c sent for' to c affront 
her/ as 't were c by accident ; ' Ophelia is 
c loosed/ book in hand, to receive him ; 
the King and his minister so bestowed 
that, c seeing unseen/ they may frankly 
judge and gather, 

If 't be the affliction of his love or no 
That thus he suffers for. 

That Ophelia is not aware of the lawful 
espials is distinctly intimated by Polonius 
himself after the interview: — 

96 



A Review of Hamlet 



How now Ophelia ! 
You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said ; 
We heard it all. 

The King's speech to the Queen, c Sweet 

Gertrude, leave us too/ &c, as well as the 

Premier's 

Gracious, so please you, 

We will bestow ourselves, 

must therefore be delivered apart, or aside, 
from Ophelia, who accepts the proposed 
encounter, simply as an opportunity of 
reconciliation. But her woman's wit and 
maiden love suggest a much better apol- 
ogy for the interview, than the old states- 
man's rather weak invention, 

Read on this book; 
That show of such an exercise may colour 
Your loneliness. 

Infinitely better her own honest, proud, 
instinctive action : — 

My lord, I have remembrances of yours 
That I have longed to re-deliver ; 
I pray you now receive them 
7 97 



A Review of Hamlet 



She ignores their last dumb meeting : 

How does your honour for this many a day ? 

And yet, womanlike, although she had 
repelled his letters and declined his visits 
without receiving a single provocation or 
vouchsafing a single explanation, she now 
immediately assumes the attitude of in- 
jured innocence : 

Take these again ; for to the noble mind 
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. 
There, my lord. 

Alas, she knew not with whom she was 
dealing. The delicious feminine insin- 
cerity, which makes a sound man smile 
in fancied superiority, was gall and worm- 
wood to this morbid lover of truth. The 
wound she had dealt his soul was mortal ; 
she had silenced the last hope of his heart ; 
and yet she undertakes to invent unkind- 
ness on his part to excuse severity on her 
own ! The whole plot flashes on him at 
once. He sees the two spies behind the 

98 



A Review of Hamlet 



scenes, as plainly as if they stood before 
him. He sees in her only a puppet or a 
decoy. The tenderness which deepened 
his voice into richer music when he first 

perceived her — 

Soft, you now ! 
The fair Ophelia. Nymph, in thy orisons 
Be all my sins remembered — 

all this is gone ; and instead of it, harsh 
bewildering laughter: — c Ha, ha! are you 
honest ? Are you fair ? — Get thee to a 
nunnery ! ' How significant that fierce, 
sudden question, ' Where 's your father ? ' 

Oph. At home my lord. 

Ham. Let the doors be shut upon him, that he 

may play the fool nowhere but in 's 

own house. 

Sure that Polonius is a listener, and with 
her connivance^ he cannot help believing 
her answer, a direct falsehood, — a false- 
hood that brings down upon her the cruel 
levity occurring just before the interlude, 
and that now embitters and corrodes his 

99 



A Review of Hamlet 



passionate but well-considered and well- 
meant warning. 

Oph. O help him, you sweet heavens ! 

Ham. If thou dost marry, I '11 give thee this 
plague for thy dowry, — be thou as 
chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou 
shalt not escape calumny. Get thee 
to a nunnery : farewell. Or if thou 
wilt needs marry, marry a fool ; for 
wise men know well enough what 
monsters you make of them. To a 
nunnery go, and quickly too, farewell. 

Oph. O heavenly powers, restore him ! 

Ham. I have heard of your paintings too, well 
enough ; God hath given you one face, 
and you make yourselves another : you 
jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nick- 
name God's creatures, and make your 
wantonness your ignorance. Go to, 
I '11 no more on 't ; it hath made me 
mad. I say we will have no more 
marriages ; those that are married al- 
ready, all but one, shall live; the rest 
shall keep as they are. To a nun- 
nery, go ! 

TOO 



A Review of Hamlet 



Harsh as this sounds to us, the madness 
which he chose to throw into it, and the 
love which could not help shining through 
it, prevent its seeming intentionally harsh 
to her. 

She laments it as grotesque, insane, la- 
mentable, but not unkind. She is not 
hurt, but sympathetic ; her prayers and 
fears are for him, not for herself; it is 
only as a mourner over his supposed 
mental ruin, that she suffers at all. — 
His glance, voice, manner, have so quali- 
fied his words that she acquits him, on the 
spot, of the unkindness with which she 
had previously taxed him. His whole 
bearing is so mercifully regulated, that her 
soul is absorbed in pity, 

O heavenly powers, restore him ! — 

O what a noble mind is here o'erthrown ! — 

That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth 

Blasted with ecstacy : O woe is me, 

To have seen what I have seen, see what I see ! 

She is most deject and wretched, but 
without even a suspicion of being badly 

IOI 



A Reviezu of Hamlet 



treated. Nor is she badly treated. The 
resentment of neglected love may inflame 
his dazzling satire, but under the circum- 
stance, c Get thee to a nunnery ' was the 
best and only advice he could give her. 
A nunnery was her best and only refuge 
from the impending storm. Destruction 
for himself and all else around him ; but, 
for her the cloisters' timely shelter. There 
is no telling when the fierce wrath may 
seize him : when he may shake down the 
pillars of that guilty palace. But not if 
he can help it, on her fair head shall the 
ruin fall ! Since the grave is opening for 
him, let the Convent open for her. Not 
his, but never another's ! O wonderful 
poet ! Could she not guess, had she not 
some shadowy perception of the jealous, 
selfish, masculine love, which despite their 
fell divorce, would wall her from the world, 
and mark her with the seal of God, to save 
her from the violation of man ? 

More appropriately here, than on the 
knocking at the gate in Macbeth, might 

I02 



A Review of Hamlet 



De Quincey exclaim, c O mighty poet? 
thy works are not as those of other men, 
simply and merely great works of art ; but 
are also like the phenomena of nature; 
like the sun and the sea, the stars and the 
flowers ; like frost and snow, rain and dew, 
hailstorm and thunder ; which are to be 
studied with entire submission of our own 
faculties, and in perfect faith, that in them 
there can be no too much or too little ; 
nothing useless or inert ; but that the fur- 
ther we press in our discoveries, the more 
we shall see proofs of design and self- 
supporting arrangement, where the care- 
less eye had seen nothing but accident ! ' 

The King has gained nothing by play- 
ing the spy ; he detects too much method 
in his nephew's madness ; that wicked 
parting threat is ringing in his ears, c All 
but one shall live ! ' His soul is on the 
rack ; restless, apprehensive, overawed. 
The weaker mind already quails before 
the stronger; the executioner of the father 

begins to tremble before the son. — 

103 



A Review of Hamlet 



There 's something in his soul, 
O'er which his melancholy sits on brood ; 
And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose 
Will be some danger ; which for to prevent 
I have in quick determination 
Thus set it down ; he shall with speed to 
England. 

But the pliant monster, overruled as 
usual by his minister, concludes to post- 
pone the threatened banishment until the 
Queen mother has a chance to be £ round 
with him,' after the play. Meanwhile the 
play within the play is preparing; and 
those wooden strollers, who in other hands 
would have proved clumsy or unmanage- 
able, are here the occasion of a quiet elo- 
quence, more effective than most dramatic 
action. c Speak the speech, I pray you,' 
is a lesson for all time to all humanity. 

The facility with which Hamlet coun- 
terfeits madness, is strikingly instanced in 
the sudden transition from his pre-emi- 
nently sane discourse with Horatio, to his 
outrageous behavior before the royal pair 

104 



A Review of Hamlet 



and their attendants. How calm, how 
measured, those solemn words to his 
friend, as if designed to anticipate any 
misconstruction in that quarter. For it 
sometimes happens we play the madman 
so very perfectly, that our best friends are 
precisely those who are the first to pro- 
nounce our sanity counterfeit, and our 
lunacy natural. But what a superb com- 
pliment he pays Horatio; how dearly he 
loves to praise where praise is due, — that 
rarest human grace : 

Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man 
As e'er my conversation cop'd withal. 

— Dost thou hear ? 

Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice, 
And could of men distinguish, her election 
Hath seal'd thee for herself. — 

— Give me that man 

That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him 
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of hearts, 
As I do thee. — 

This is the friend whom he now com- 
missions to watch the one scene that 
comes near the circumstance, 

105 



A Review of Hamlet 



Which I have told thee, of my father's death : 
I prithee, when thou see'st that act a-foot, 
Even with the very comment of thy soul 
Observe mine uncle ; if his occulted guilt 
Do not itself unkennel in one speech, 
It is a damned ghost that we have seen ; 
And my imaginations are as foul 
As Vulcan's stithy. Give him heedful note, 
For I mine eyes will rivet to his face ; 
And, after, we will both our judgments join 
In censure of his seeming. 

Then, as the first notes of the Danish 
March announce the coming of the King 
and court, he plunges instantaneously and 
without effort, into the reckless, impene- 
trable, frightful levity, that carries him 
through the scene. King, Queen, Polo- 
nius, Ophelia, are one by one impaled on 
his savage irony. 

King. How fares our cousin Hamlet ? 

Ham. Excellent, i' faith ; of the chameleon's 
dish : I eat the air, promise-cramm'd ; 
you cannot feed capons so. 

King. I have nothing with this answer, Ham- 
let j these words are not mine. 
1 06 



A Review of Hamlet 



Ham. No, nor mine, now. — My lord, you 
play'd once i' the University, you say. 
(To Polonius.) 

Pol. That I did, my lord ; and was accounted 
a good actor. 

Ham. And what did you enact ? 

Pol. I did enact Julius Caesar, I was kill'd i' 
the Capitol; Brutus killed me. — 

Ham. It was a brute part of him to kill so cap- 
ital a calf there. — Be the players 
ready ? 

Ros. Ay, my lord, they stay upon your pa- 
tience. 

ghieen. Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by 
me. 

Ham. No, good mother, here's metal more 
attractive. 

Pol. O ho ! do you mark that ? (To the King.) 

Ham. Lady, shall I lie in your lap ? — 

(Lying down at Ophelia's feet.) 
Oph. You are merry, my lord. * * * 

Ham. What should a man do, but be merry ? 

for look you how cheerfully my 

mother looks, and my father died 

within these two hours. — 

Oph. Nay, 't is twice two months, my lord. — 

107 



A Review of Hamlet 



Ham. So long ? Nay, then, let the devil wear 
black, for I '11 have a suit of sables. 
O heavens ! died two months ago, 
and not forgotten yet ? Then there 's 
hope a great man's memory may out- 
live his life half a year. — 
(Hautboys play. The Dumb Show enters.) 
Oph. What means this, my lord ? 
Ham. Marry, this is miching mallecho; 1 it 
means mischief. — 
(Enter Prologue.) 
Pro. For us and for our tragedy, 

Here stooping to your clemency, 
We beg your hearing patiently. 
Ham. Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring ? 
Oph. 'T is brief, my lord. 
Ham. As woman's love. 

What a volume of pathos in that whis- 
pered word ! his last serious word to her 
— the sole reproach he ever makes her ! 

Puppet ®)ueen. Nor earth to me give food, nor 
heaven light — * * * 
If once a widow, ever I be wife ! — 

1 Probably a corruption of Spanfsb, " mucho malhecho," i. e., 
much ill done, or very ill done. 

108 



A Review of Hamlet 



Ham. Madam, how like you this play ? 

ghieen. The lady doth protest too much, me- 
thinks. 

Ham. O, but she '11 keep her word. 

King. Have you heard the argument ? Is 
there no offence in 't ? 

Ham. No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest ; 
no offence V the world. 

King. What do you call the play ? 

Ham. The Mouse-trap. Marry, how ? Trop- 
ically. This play is the image of a 
murder done in Vienna; Gonzago is 
the duke's name; his wife, Baptista : 
you shall see anon; 'tis a knavish 
piece of work; but what of that? 
Your majesty and we that have free 
souls ; it touches us not ; let the galled 
jade wince, our withers are unrung. 

[Enter Lucianus.) 

This is one Lucianus, nephew to the 
King.— 

Opb. You are as good as a chorus, my lord. — - 
[Lucianus pours poison into the 
sleeper's ear,) 
109 



A Review of Hamlet 



Ham. He poisons him i' the garden for 's estate. 
His name 's Gonzago : the story is ex- 
tant and written in very choice Italian : 
You shall see anon how the murderer 
gets the love of Gonzago's wife. 

Oph. The King rises. 

Ham. What frightened with false fire ? 

Queen. How fares my lord ? 

Pol. Give o'er the play. 

King. Give me some light ; away ! 

All. Lights, lights, lights. 

(Exeunt all except Hamlet and 
Horatio.) 

Any other poet would have been con- 
tent to fix the climax of the scene, in the 
disordered flight of the palsied murderer ; 
but in Shakespeare, it is only a stepping 
stone to loftier achievements. The rest of 
the act is a tour de force, a torrent of elo- 
quence, passion and power; a stream of 
intellectual glory. The dramatic work- 
manship is inimitable. After the signal 
triumph of this scheme, after this con- 
clusive confirmation of the ghostly tale, 

no 



A Review of Hamlet 



Hamlet abandons himself to the capricious 
impulse of the moment, as a strong swim- 
mer abandons himself to a current, only to 
breast it with recovered strength. What- 
ever is uppermost in his mind, is the first 
to find expression. Half remembered frag- 
ments of verse, whether applicable or not; 
tumultuous raillery, in which Horatio is 
swept along, like a leaf in a whirlwind ; 
swift serious questions ; sharp yearnings 
for music ; are all blended together, with 
unparalleled power and truth. 

Ham. Why let the stricken deer go weep, 

The hart ungalled play ; 
For some must watch, while 

some must sleep ; 
Thus runs the world away. — 
Would not this, Sir, and a forest of 
feathers (if the rest of my fortunes 
turn Turk with me,) with two Provin- 
cial Roses on my razed shoes, get me 
a fellowship in a cry of players, Sir ? 
Hor. Half a share. 
Ham. A whole one, I. 

m 



A Review of Hamlet 



For dost thou know, O Damon 
dear, 
This realm dismantled was 
Of Jove himself; and now reigns 
here 

A very, very peacock. 

Hor, You might have rhymed. 
Ham. O good Horatio, I '11 take the ghost's 
word for a thousand pound. Did 'st 
perceive ? 
Hor. Very well, my lord. 
Ham. Upon the talk of poisoning ? 
Hor. I did very well note him. 
Ham. Ah, ha ! — Come, some music ! come, the 
recorders ! 
For if the King like not the comedy, 
Why, then, belike, — he likes it not, 

perdy. — 
Come, some music ! — 

Re-enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. 

The instant he perceives them, his hysterical 
mirth curdles into deadly scorn. With 
princely reserve and measured disdain, he 
beats back their joint attack, trampling alike 

I 12 



A Review of Hamlet 



on them and on the royalty they represent. 
This trialogue is one of the most mem- 
orable portions of the play. Every speech 
of Hamlet's has the flash and sweep of an 
archangel's sword. 

Guild. Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word 
with you. 

Ham. Sir, a whole history. 

Guild. The King^ Sir, — 

Ham. Ay, Sir, what of him ? 

Guild. Is in his retirement, marvellous dis- 
tempered. 

Ham. With drink, Sir ? 

Guild. No, my lord, with choler. 

Ham. Your wisdom would show itself more 
richer to signify this to his doctor ; for 
me to put him to his purgation, would 
perhaps plunge him into more choler. 

Guild. Good my lord, put your discourse into 
some frame, and start not so wildly 
from my afFair. 

Ham. I 'm tame, sir ; — pronounce. 

Guild. The Queen, your mother, in most great 
affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you. 

Ham. You are welcome. 
8 113 



A Review of Hamlet 



Guild. Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not 
of the right breed. If it shall please 
you to make me a wholesome answer, 
I will do your mother's command- 
ment ; if not, your pardon, and my 
return, shall be the end of my business. 

Ham. Sir, I cannot. 

Guild. What, my lord ? 

Ham. Make you a wholesome answer ; my 
wit 's diseased : but, Sir, such answer 
as I can make, you shall command : or 
rather, as you say, my mother : there- 
fore no more, but to the matter: my 
mother, you say, — 

Guildenstern thus staggered and silenced, 
Rosencrantz hastens to the rescue. 

Ros. Then thus she says ; your behaviour 
hath struck her into amazement and 
admiration. 

Ham. O wonderful son that can so astonish a 
mother ! — But is there no sequel, at 
the heels of this mother's admiration ? 

Ros. She desires to speak with you in her closet 
ere you go to bed. 
1 14 



A Review of Hamlet 



Ham. We shall obey were she ten times our 
mother. Have you any further trade 
with us ? — 

The music for which he has been longing, 
enters at last, and the recorder's silent pipe 
is made immortal as the harp of Orpheus. 

Ham. Will you play upon this pipe ? 

Guild. Mv lord, I cannot. 

Ham. I pray you. 

Guild. Believe me, I cannot. 

Ham. I do beseech you. 

Guild. I know no touch of it, my lord. — 

Ham. 'T is as easy as lying : govern these 
ventages with your fingers and thumb, 
give it breath with your mouth ; and 
it will discourse most eloquent music. 
Look you, these are stops. 

Guild. But these cannot I command to any utter- 
ance of harmony ; I have not the skill. 

Ham. Why, look you now, how unworthy a 
thing you make of me ! You would 
play upon me; you would seem to 
know my stops ; you would pluck out 
the heart of my mystery ; you would 
ii5 



A Review of Hamlet 



sound me, from my lowest note, to the 
top of my compass ; and there is much 
music, excellent voice in this little 
organ, yet cannot you make it speak. 
'Sblood, do you think that I am easier 
to be played on than a pipe ? Call 
me what instrument you will, though 
you can fret me, you cannot play upon 
me. 

The breach between them is widening ; a 
dead friendship is rapidly developing into 
an active hatred. Throughout the inter- 
view, Hamlet preserves a frozen calm 
which they can neither penetrate nor dis- 
turb, though all the while his blood is boil- 
ing. With masterly self-control, he bids 
Polonius ( God bless you, sir ! ' little 
knowing what immediate need there was 
for such blessing. There is even a pale 
evanescent tenderness glimmering through 
that too palpably counterfeit lunacy, as if 
the Premier's superannuated slyness were 
a relief, after the baseness of the two ado- 
lescent spies. 

1 16 



A Review of Hamlet 



Pol. My lord, the queen would speak with 

you, and presently. 
Ham. Do you see yonder cloud that 's almost 

in shape of a camel ? 
Pol. By the mass, and \ is like a camel, indeed. 
Ham. Methinks it is like a weasel. 
Pol. It is backed like a weasel. 
Ham. Or like a whale. 
Pol. Very like a whale. 
Ham. Then will I come to my mother by-and 

by. — They fool me to the top of my 

bent. — I will come by-and-by. — 

Leave me, friends. 

He has hardly time to hurry them from his 
presence, before the dark thought underly- 
ing all this mirth betrays itself: he is trem- 
bling on the verge of matricide. 

'T is now the very witching time of night, 
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes 

out 
Contagion to this world ; now could I drink hot 

bloody 
And do such bitter business as the day 
Would quake to look on. Soft ! now to my 

mother. — 

117 



A Review of Hamlet 



heart lose not thy nature ; let not ever 
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom : 
Let me be cruel, not unnatural : 

1 will speak daggers to her, but use none; 

My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites, — 

How in my words soever she be shent, 

To give them seals, never, my soul, consent ! 

In this mood he seeks the Queen's closet, 
and in this mood encounters the King at 
prayer. He must have overheard, on his 
way there, the interview between the King 
and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ; he 
must have witnessed or overheard them 
' making love ' to their pitiful employ- 
ment. For scarcely in any other way 
could he have foreknown the royal de- 
termination, which he immediately after 
refers to. 

Ham. I must to England : you know that ? 

S^ueen, Alack, 

I had forgot : 't is so concluded on. 

That ominous interlude has not improved 

the King's repose. 

118 



A Review of Hamlet 



King. I Hk« him not, nor stands it safe with us 
To let his madness range. — 
The terms of our estate may not endure 

Hazard so dangerous, as doth hourly grow 

Out of his lunacies. — 
Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy 
voyage : 

For we will fetters put upon this fear 
Which now goes too free-footed. 
AV/c, Guild. We will hasten us — 

Remorse, instilled by bodily fear, has 
driven the drunkard murderer to attempt 
repentance. 

Help, angels, make assay : 
How, stubborn knees j and, heart with 

strings of steel, 
Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe ! 

(Retires and kneels.} 
(Enter Hamlet.) 
Ham. Now might I do it pat, now he is praying ; 
And now I '11 do it ; — and so he goes to 

Heaven ; 
And so am I revenged; — that would 
be scanned : 

119 



A Review of Hamlet 



A villain kills my father; and for that, 
I, his sole son, do this same villain send 
To Heaven. 

Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge. 
He took my father grossly, full of bread ; 
With all his crimes broad blown, as 

flush as May : 
And how his audit stands, who knows 

save Heaven : 
But in our circumstance, and course of 

thought, 
'T is heavy with him : and am I, then, 

revenged 
To take him in the purging of his soul, 

When he is fit, and season'd for his 

passage ? 
No. 
Up, sword ; and know thou a more horrid 

hent, 
When he is drunk, asleep, or in his rage : 
At gaming, swearing ; or about some act 
That has no relish of salvation in it ; — 
Then trip him, that his heels may kick 

at heaven; 
And that his soul may be as damn'd and 

black 
As hell, whereto it goes. 
1 20 



A Review of Hamlet 



Hazlitt calls this ghastly, livid wrath, f a 
refinement in malice, to excuse his own 
want of resolution.' A shallow plausi- 
bility, demolished by that resolute pass 
through the arras, aimed an instant later, 
at this same King of shreds and patches! 
And besides, there is the drama to consider. 
To kill the King then, would have been 
an anticlimax and the play have been cut 
short, as it would also had the King, and 
not Polonius, been behind the arras ! In 
both these instances the plot required that 
the King should live, but Hamlet showed 
himself perfectly willing to kill him out 
of hand if caught eavesdropping. 

The main sorrow of the Ghost is the 
manner of his taking off: 

Cut off even in the blossom of my sin, 

sent to my account 

With all my imperfections on my head. 

Hamlet's main sorrow is less his father's 
sudden death, than eternal doom. Once 
fully abandoned to the terrible temptation 



121 



A Review of Hamlet 



which besets him, once mad enough to 
( dare damnation,' he is not going to sell 
his soul for a song ; not going to kill the 
King at his prayers : he will give measure 
for measure, eternal doom, for eternal 
doom. The depths of faith are revealing 
darker possibilities of revenge ; but the 
whole frightful passage is a fiendish sug- 
gestion, vividly presented, rather than 
deliberately embraced. It is the first wild, 
natural imprecation of a son for the first 
time sure that his uncle is the assassin of 
his father. This bitter certainty trans- 
forms him for the moment almost into a 
demon ; and though his conscience re- 
asserts its sway, this is clearly the mood 
in which he afterwards meets his mother. 
Had the Prince known that the King, far 
from being truly repentant, was sending 
him to his death in England, he would 
assuredly have slain the wretch upon the 
spot and the play would have had a totally 
different ending. Shakespeare's art avoided 
the anticlimax in both these situations. 

122 



A Review of Hamlet 



Polonius is playing the eavesdropper 
once too often : how dexterous, sly, and 
busy he is : — 

Pol. Look you, lay home to him : 

Tell him his pranks have been too broad 

to bear with. 
And that your grace hath screen'd and 

stood between 
Much heat and him. I '11 sconce me 

even here. 
Pray you be round with him. 

She means to ' be round with him,' to ( lay 

home to him.' * I '11 warrant you/ she 

says ; c Fear not me! She is very bold 

and confident and self-contained. She is 

used to conquest. Her dominion over 

both her royal husbands was supreme : 

the first is true and tender to her, even in 

that sulphurous prison-house to which her 

fickle beauty helped to doom him : the 

second quotes her, though she must then 

be near fifty, as the central sun round 

which he circles. 

123 



A Review of Hamlet 



She 's so conjunctive to my life and soul, 
That, as the star moves not but in its sphere, 
I could not but by her. 

She is morally weak, but otherwise strong : 
fascinated by a brute, but not cognizant 
of his crime : the slave of one sin, yet the 
mistress of more than one virtue. The 
character is not an uncommon one. Her 
prostitution cannot be sufficiently detested; 
but there is not the shadow of a ground 
to suppose her conscious of the fratricide. 
As often happens with these magnetic 
unfortunates, her tender-heartedness sur- 
vives her personal degradation. She has 
a kind word for everybody, and it flows 
unaffectedly from her heart : but, once 
roused, she displays the spirit of an Ama- 
zon. When the mutineers overbear the 
officers and break the doors, she strides 
between the armed rabble and the craven 
King, with a flash of the same fierce wrath 
which her son inherits. 

How cheerfully on the false trail they cry ! 
O this is counter, you false Danish dogs. — 

124 



A Review of Hamlet 



Not easily crushed, this fair, false, haughty- 
matron : — not easily shaken off, with one 
wave of the lion's mane, like Polonius 
and Guildenstern. The encounter is stern 
from the start. 



Ham. Now, mother, what 's the matter ? 

Shieen. Hamlet, thou hast thy father much of- 
fended. 

Ham. Mother, you have my father much of- 
fended. 

®)ueen. Come, come, you answer with an idle 
tongue. 

Ham. Go, go, you question with a wicked 
tongue. 

®)ueen. Why, how now, Hamlet ! 

Ham. — What 's the matter now ? 

§)ueen. Have you forgot me ? 

Ham. — No, by the rood not so : 

You are the Queen, your husband's 

brother's wife; 
And — would it were not so ! you are 
my mother. 

®)ueen. Nay, then, I '11 set those to you that can 
speak. 

125 



A Review of Hamlet 



Ham. Come, come, and sit you down j you 
shall not budge. 
You go not till I set you up a glass 
Where you may see the inmost part of 
you. 
^ueen. What wilt thou do ? thou wilt not mur- 
der me ! 
Help, help, ho! 
Pol. (Behind.) What, ho ! help, help, help ! 
Ham. How now, a rat ? (Draws.) Dead for 
a ducat, dead ! 
(Makes a pass through the arras.) 
Pol. (Behind.) O, I am slain. (Falls and 
dies. ) 

Observe three things : the instantaneous 
assumption of lunacy, the sharp, unhesi- 
tating lunge, — the perfect nerve and com- 
posure after the deed is done. Weak ? 
why, action is even easier than words to 
this terrible son of the sea-kings. 

But the Queen-mother, unsubdued 
even by this frightful proof of Hamlet's 
determination to carry his point, is still 

every inch a Queen. 

126 



A Review of Hamlet 



ghxeen. O me, what hast thou done ? 

Ham. — Nay, I know not. 

Is it the king ? 
Queen. O what a rash and bloody deed is this ! 
Ham. A bloody deed ! — almost as bad, good 
mother, 

As kill a King, and marry with his brother. 
®)ueen. As kill a King ! 
Ham. Ay, lady, 't was my word. — 

Had she flinched beneath that sudden 
test, had she faltered beneath the long 
and searching gaze with which these de- 
cisive words were accompanied, he might 
have slain her in his fury on the spot. 
There was no escaping that infallible 
ordeal : guilt or innocence was written 
unmistakably in her face; and it needs 
not the weak assurance of the Quarto of 
1603 to convince us of her innocence. 

®>ueen. But as I have a soul, I swear by heaven, 
I never knew of this most horrid murder. 

The stronger assurance is in her face, in 
her whole behavior. That question and 
that gaze have satisfied him : his denuncia- 

127 



A Review of Hamlet 



tions are henceforth restricted to her in- 
fidelity. 

Ham. Leave wringing of hands ; peace, sit you 
down, 
And let me wring your heart; for so I 

shall, 
If it be made of penetrable stuff; 
If damned custom have not brazed it so 
That it is proof and bulwark against 
sense. 
6)ueen. What have I done, that thou dar'st wag 
thy tongue 
In noise so rude against me ? 
Ham. Such an act 

That blurs the grace and blush of 
modesty ; 

Calls virtue hypocrite ; takes off the rose 
From the fair forehead of an innocent 

love, 
And sets a blister there ; makes marriage 

vows 
As false as dicer's oaths. 
6)ueen. Ay me, what act 

That roars so loud, and thunders in the 
index ? 
Ham. Look here upon this picture, and on this. 

128 



A Review of Hamlet 



It requires all the tremendous sequel of 
the speech, to humble her thoroughly : 
but beneath the blast of that resistless 
invective, she melts away at his feet. c O 
Hamlet, speak no more ! ' But his brain 
and heart are on fire ; his words flow like 
lava, fiercer, faster, hotter, till stayed in 
mid career by the fancied or real re- 
appearance of the Ghost. Its speech to 
Hamlet implies its reality ; its invisibility 
to the Queen, its unreality. To the audi- 
ence, it should be as visible as when it 
swept the platform before the Castle. Its 
invisibility to the Queen may be accounted 
for by supposing a merciful forbearance in 
the royal spectre and thus ascribing an- 
other grace to the proud, tender shade of 
the buried majesty of Denmark. Indeed, 
the brief visitation is more like an errand 
of love than of revenge. After a rapid, 
causeless admonition, the phantom's sole 
anxiety centres on the Queen, about whose 
ultimate fate he is a thousandfold more 
solicitous than about his victim son's. 
9 129 



A Review of Hamlet 



Here, as well as earlier in the Play, Ham- 
let may have felt this ghostly neglect — felt 
the little more of earth than Heaven in 
this jealous eagerness to cleanse c the royal 
bed of Denmark/ of c luxury and damned 
incest ' ; — felt, amidst all his vast pity, 
that his own spirituality, his own welfare, 
were slighted by this ( negotio in node per- 
ambulanteJ Nothing short of the jealous 
impatience of indestructible love could 
have imputed to Hamlet c an almost 
blunted purpose/ while Polonius, slain for 
the King, was still lying in his blood; 
unless, indeed, the Ghost were singularly 
ignorant of that unhappy transaction. It 
was a signally sharp purpose that slew the 
Premier. Hotspur himself, in Hamlet's 
place, could not well have gone through 
this terrible scene with more dash, de- 
cision, and reckless scorn of consequences, 
while all that lurid eloquence, all those 
frozen tears, would be missing ! Measure- 
less conjugal love makes the apparition 

real, and explains its being both invisible 

130 



A Review of Hamlet 



and inaudible to the Queen. Hamlet's 
heated imagination and filial piety, dor- 
mant as to her, could never have invented 
a speech of such heroic doting. At all 
events, the reappearance of the Ghost, so 
far as the audience and the part itself are 
concerned, is a dramatic necessity. But 
do not let us allow the impatient re- 
proaches made by a questionable shape 
to blind us to the fatal vigor of that pass 
behind the arras. 

Hamlet's attitude towards his mother is 
that of an inspired prophet. He moulds 
her like wax to his better will by the mi- 
raculous energy of his expressions. He 
labors giant-like to save her 'fighting' 
soul ; reaching down a redeeming hand 
through the darkness of deep abysses ; 
dragging her half willing, half reluctant, 
bruised, trembling, bleeding, into the full 
daylight of God's holy summits. 

Ham. Mother, for love of grace, 

Lay not that flattering unction to your 
soul, 

131 



A Review of Hamlet 



That not your trespass, but my mad- 
ness, speaks; 

Confess yourself to heaven ; 

Repent what 's past ; avoid what is to 

come; 

Forgive me this my virtue : 

For in the fatness of these pursy times 

Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg. 

Precisely what he himself must do to 
most of his readers, for not being more 
bloodthirsty and vindictive. His irony 
assumes a momentary plaintiveness : 

Once more, good night : 
And when you are desirous to be blest, 
I '11 blessing beg of you. 

He can afford to be tender : his barbed 
invective has apparently exterminated the 
sin at which it is aimed : shaft has fol- 
lowed shaft, until the air is darkened. 
But one temptation still survives ; and 
the quiver of this young Apollo is inex- 
haustible. By a fine climax of sarcasm, 
intermixed with a grotesque but signifi- 
cant menace, he contrives to diminish the 

132 



A Review of Hamlet 



novel danger to which her infatuation 
exposes her ; namely, the allurements oc- 
casioned by the vivid recital of the details 
of her guilt : 

'T were good you let him know ; 
For who, that 's but a Queen, fair, sober, wise, 
Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib, 
Such dear concernings hide ? who would do so ? 
No, in despite of sense and secrecy, 
Unpeg the basket on the house's top : 
Let the birds fly, and like the famous ape, 
To try conclusions, in the basket creep, 
And break your own neck down. 

It is terrible to hear a son thus threat- 
ening a mother, face to face : but, taken 
all in all, his bearing is not entirely un- 
warranted. And this brings us to what 
is, perhaps, the very deepest problem in 
the play. 

A mission, inaugurated by what may be 
called a miracle, can hardly fail to furnish 
its own opportunities. Chance, in Ham- 
let's case, will be unseen direction. Since 
his life is manacled to one issue by preter- 

i33 



A Review of Hamlet 



natural interposition, let the same dread 
agency also indicate the manner of arriv- 
ing at that issue. In the frenzy inspired 
by the conviction that the Ghost's word 
is c true for a thousand pound/ he would 
have slain the King, had he been sure of 
thus dealing out eternal as well as tem- 
poral ruin. But ever after and before 
that horrible impulse, he is steadily on the 
defensive. Even that swift pass through 
the arras is defensive ; he does not strike 
until his own safety has been compro- 
mised by his mother's cry for help. From 
the moment that he has satisfied himself of 
the Ghost's veracity, he is eager to obey 
its behests. There is but an hour or two, 
at most, between the self-betrayal of the 
King at the interlude, and the killing of 
Polonius, — a mistake which he regrets 
rather as a misfortune than as a crime ; 

For this same lord 
I do repent ; but heaven hath pleased it so 
To punish me with this, and this with me, 
That I must be their scourge and minister. 

134 



A Review of Hamlet 



With men of Hamlet's mould, intellec- 
tual scorn is as unchangeable as truth 
itself. And it may be added that his 
exquisitely truthful nature constantly ex- 
hibits a stern unforgivingness of calcu- 
lated, persistent insincerity and fraud ; an 
unforgivingness which, but for vast, won- 
drous, inexplicable miracles of mercy, must 
belong to supreme Truth itself. A deed, 
a sight, that might well dismay the warrior 
of a hundred fields, makes no perceptible 
impression upon the nerves of this pre- 
mature veteran in woe. 

Indeed, this Counsellor 
Is now most still, most secret, and most grave, 
Who was in life a foolish, prating knave. 
Come, Sir, to draw toward an end with you — 
Good night, mother. 

Yet beneath this desperate apathy lurks 
the silent grace of tears. If the Queen 
may be believed, he is weeping while he 
speaks. 

We do not know by what or whose 
i35 



A Review of Hamlet 



authority the Act is made to end here ; 
certainly not by Shakespeare's. The text 
of the Quarto runs straight on from be- 
ginning to end, without numbering a single 
Act or Scene. The Folio numbers them 
only so far as the Second Scene of the 
Second Act. Instead of c Exeunt sever- 
ally,' as the stage direction now stands, it 
is c Exit 9 in the Quarto, and 'Exit Hamlet , 
lugging in Polonius, in the Folio. In both, 
the Queen remains on the stage; the King 
enters, and the action proceeds uninter- 
ruptedly. The present arrangement not 
only ruins the Fourth Act, but confuses 
and enfeebles the whole play. For rea- 
sons presently given, we shall review the 
Third Act to its legitimate conclusion. 

True to her vow, the Queen represents 
Hamlet to the King as 

Mad as the sea and wind when both contend 
Which is the mightier. 

And observe how admirably that rapid 
assumption of lunacy now serves his turn: 

136 



A Review of Hamlet 



He whips his rapier out and cries, c A rat, a rat!' 
And in this brainish apprehension, kills 
The unseen good old man. 

The King is in a most unroyal panic. 

King. O heavy deed ! 

It had been so with us, had we been 

there : 
His liberty is full of threats to all ; 
To you yourself, to us, to every one. 
The sun no sooner shall the mountains 

touch 
But we will ship him hence. — 

Ho, Guildenstern ! — 



Go seek him out. — Come, Gertrude ! — 

come away ! 
My soul is full of discord and dismay. 

(Exeunt?) 

The next scene is the arrest. Hamlet's 
unmitigated, open contempt of the inevi- 
table pair, so different from his former 
constrained courtesy, reassures us that he 
overheard their pitiful willingness to su- 
perintend his exile. Guildenstern was 
peacefully silenced ; but the more inquisi- 

*37- 



A Review of Hamlet 



tive and less manly Rosencrantz is spurned 
and abolished, as Geraint's sword would 
have abolished the angry dwarf. 

Ros. What have you done, my lord, with the 

dead body ? 
Ham. Compounded it with dust, whereto 't is kin. 
Ros. Tell us where 't is, that we may take it 
thence 
And bear it to the chapel. 
Ham. Do not believe it. 
Ros. Believe what ? 

Ham. That I can keep your counsel and not 
mine own. Besides , to be demanded of 
a sponge ! — what replication should be 
made, by the son of a King? 
Ros. Take you me for a sponge, my lord ? 
Ham. Ay, sir ; that soaks up the King's counte- 
nance, his rewards, his authorities. 
But such officers do the King best 
service in the end ; he keeps them, 
like an ape, in the corner of his jaw ; 
first mouthed, to be last swallowed ; 
when he needs what you have gleaned, 
it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, 
you shall be dry again. 
138 



A Review of Hamlet 



Ros. I understand you not, my lord. 

Ham. I am glad of it ; a knavish speech sleeps 

in a foolish ear. 
Ros. My lord, you must tell us where the body 

is and go with us to the King. 
Ham. The body is with the King, but the King 

is not with the body. 
The King is a thing — 
Guild. A thing, my lord ! 
Ham. Of nothing; bring me to him. Hide 

fox, and all after. 

That the arrest is a literal military ar- 
rest, see a few lines later. 

King. But where is he ? 

Ros. Without, my lord, guarded, to know your 

pleasure. 
King. Bring him before us. 
Ros. Ho, Guildenstern ! bring in my lord. 

The haughty questioning of the King 
is pitilessly demolished by the sublime 
ferocity of an attack, rapid and resistless 
as lightning. The spear of Lancelot o'er- 
threw whate'er it smote: Hamlet's elec- 
trical scorn withers and annihilates. 

i39 



A Review of Hamlet 



King. Now Hamlet, where 's Polonius ! 

Ham. At supper. 

King. At supper ! where ? 

Ham. Not where he eats, but where he is 
eaten : a certain convocation of politic 
worms are e'en at him. Your worm 
is your only emperor for diet ; we fat 
all creatures else to fat us, and we fat 
ourselves for maggots ; your fat king 
and your lean beggar is but variable 
service, — two dishes but to one table : 
that 's the end. 

King. Alas, alas ! 

Ham. A man may fish with the worm that 
hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish 
that hath fed of that worm. 

King. What dost thou mean by this ? 

Ham. Nothing but to show you how a king 
may go a progress through the guts 
of a beggar. 

King. Where is Polonius ? 

Ham. In heaven ; send hither to see : if your 
messenger find him not there, seek him 
i* the other place yourself. But in- 
deed if you find him not within this 
month, you shall nose him as you go 
upstairs into the lobby. 
140 



A Review of Hamlet 



King. Go seek him there. (To some of the 

attendants.) 
Ham. He will stay till ye come. 
King. Hamlet, this deed must send thee hence 
With fiery quickness : therefore prepare 

thyself; 
The bark is ready, and the wind at help, 
The associates tend, and everything is 

bent 
For England. 
Ham. For England ? 
King. Ay, Hamlet. 

Ham. Good. 

King. So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes. 
Ham. I see a cherub that sees them. — But come, 
for England ! 

Does not this point, in its beautiful way 
— like a star at sea — toward the pirate of 
very warlike appointment ? But of this 
hereafter. The King is all aghast : 

Follow him at foot; tempt him with speed 

aboard ; 
Delay it not ; I '11 have him hence to-night : 
Away ; for everything is sealed and done 

141 



A Review of Hamlet 



That else leans on the affair : pray you, make 

haste. 

(Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.) 
And, England, if my love thou hold'st at aught, 
(As my great power thereof may give thee sense, 
Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red 
After the Danish sword, and thy free awe 
Pays homage to us,) thou may'st not coldly set 
Our Sovereign process ; which imports at full, 
By letters conjuring to that effect, 
The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England : 
For like the hectic in my blood he rages, 
And thou must cure : till I know 't is done, 
Howe'er my haps, my joys were ne'er begun. 

{Exit.) 

All the might of Denmark, and her 
dependencies arrayed against the exiled 
Prince ! But just then, the martial figure 
of Fortinbras emerges from the distance 
and flits by in the foreground. l Enter 
Fortinbrasse with his army over the stage: 
Enter Fortinbrasse ', Drumme and Soldiers ; ' 
as the old copies have it. And in this 
pomp and circumstance of a rival power, 
we recognize the hope on which Hamlet 
is silently but securely building. With 

142 



A Review of Hamlet 



this significant array of benignant strength, 
with this flash of a better fortune for Den- 
mark athwart the deepening drama, the 
act should end. Ending here, the inter- 
val consumed by the voyage to England, 
the return of Laertes from Paris, and the 
expedition of Fortinbras to Poland and 
back, is thrown between the Acts, — its 
natural place. Greek tragedy, restricted 
by its organic law to the culmination of 
events, was necessarily an unbroken march 
from its first chorus to its catastrophe. 
Modern tragedy aiming rather at the de- 
velopment of character, through a series 
of events, has wisely divided these events 
into groups separated from each other by 
the interposition of a curtain. By this brief 
but total eclipse of the fictitious world, 
the mind is prepared for intervals of time 
or space. A year elapsed, or an ocean 
crossed, during the fall of that mysterious 
screen, does less violence to the imagina- 
tion than the supposition of a month be- 
tween consecutive scenes. In fact, the 

i43 



A Review of Hamlet 



fancy is almost as free, save to conse- 
quences, at the second rise of the curtain as 
at the first. We accept Claude Melnotte as 
a recruit in one act, and a Colonel in the 
next : but when looking dead into the 
open heart of a spectacle, we are asked to 
believe that the Prince who embarked for 
England under our eyes, is back again in 
five minutes, after a sea fight, and a week's 
cruise, the imagination rebels. The pro- 
posed extension of the Third Act, would 
make this greatest of tragedies the most 
symmetrical too ; while the Fourth Act, 
relieved of a confusion which is now mis- 
taken for an anticlimax, would be devoted 
with a single purpose to its two superb 
contrasts — the revenge of Laertes with 
the revenge of Hamlet, and the utter mad- 
ness of Ophelia with the semi-counterfeit 
lunacy of her lover. A gain almost as 
great for the closet, as for the stage. 

And what a tremendous Act that Third 
one is ! unrivalled in wealth of imagery, 

in exhaustless variety and steadily culmi- 

144 



A Review of Hamlet 



nating power, by anything in creative art, 
unless it be the almost equally marvellous 
Festival Act of Don Giovanni, Mozart, 
like Shakespeare, had the faculty of per- 
fect articulation ; and hence the intense 
self-delight they constantly exhibit. They 
alone, and Raphael, have the faculty of 
projecting the whole shy and ever reluctant 
idea from the dim chambers of conception, 
into full, unclouded sunlight. Like all 
perfect embodiments, the works of Mo- 
zart, Raphael and Shakespeare cast their 
own shadows : the works of others — Bee- 
thoven, Goethe, Angelo — are shadows of 
the master's selves. It is a common vice 
to prefer the second chiar-oscuro to the first. 
The present Fourth Scene of the Fourth 
Act, except the nine opening lines, is omit- 
ted in the Folio. It is needless to re- 
capitulate the argument already advanced. 
With the Quarto before them and every 
temptation to expand, the long pendant to 
the entry of Fortinbras, must have been 

advisedly rejected by the editors of the 
io i 45 



A Review of Hamlet 



Folio. Heminge and Condell were at 
least as familiar with this scene as we are. 
Minor errors in abundance may have crept 
into the First Folio ; minor omissions and 
additions may disfigure its text : it may be, 
as Home Tooke says, c the only edition 
worth regarding ' ; and, as Mr. Knight 
says, c the most correctly printed book on 
record ' ; or it may have been, as Mr. 
Dyce believes, c dismissed from the press 
with less care and attention than any book 
of any extent and reputation in the whole 
annals of English typography/ But the 
certainty still remains that Heminge and 
Condell, £ sober, earnest critics ,' would 
never have dared to repudiate a long solil- 
oquy that had a place in the standard act- 
ing copy — the standard ultimately fixed 
by Shakespeare himself, or with his dis- 
tinct approval. A jest or two in Richard, 
an indecisive scene in Lear, might escape 
them ; but not, of all things on earth, a 
soliloquy of Hamlet's — the final soliloquy 
too ! 

146 



A Review of Hamlet 



Unquestionably, all that stately dialogue 
with the Captain is Shakespeare's : possibly 
he wrote the whole soliloquy, every line 
of it, just as it stands. Even in that age 
of giants c sturdy but unclean,' there may 
have been no second touch to equal the 

felicity of 

Now whether it be 
Bestial oblivion or some craven scruple 
Of thinking too precisely on the event, — 
A thought, which, quartered, hath but one part 

wisdom, 
And ever three parts coward. 

It may have been written to strengthen 
the Acts, or to please Burbage or whoever 
played the part : written, tried y and aban- 
doned. For though a leading tragedian 
might cling to so tempting a bit of decla- 
mation, the house, the company, and the 
author, would be sure to reject it in the 
end. It is most awkwardly introduced — 
lugged in by the head and heels like a dead 
afterthought. It is the one speech too 

many that palsies both actor and audience ; 

147 



A Review of Hamlet 



that fails alike on the stage or in the closet ; 
that superficially countenances the impu- 
tation of weakness and needlessly compli- 
cates the character. We can imagine the 
more than half-created Hamlet, statue-like 
uplifting his hand in sublime protest against 
the threatened malformation. After the 
other noble monologues, it is weak as 
water. But the supreme reason for its 
rejection is that it \s false. — 

1 do not know 



Why yet I live to say, c This thing 's to do ' ; 
Sith / have cause and will and strength and means 
To do it. 

He had not strength and means to do it, 
and could not have, until rescued from 
captivity and impending death by that 
well-appointed pirate. So, apart from its 
comparative feebleness, apart from its su- 
perfluity, apart from its being most lamely 
and discordantly introduced, C I '11 be with 
you straight — go a little before/ — there 

is a positive necessity for its rejection : it is 

148 



A Review of Hamlet 



false ! False and unnatural ! For how- 
ever happily his counterplot may terminate, 
it is surely not as a prisoner on the brink 
of exile, environed by the royal guards, 
that such a motive for self-reproach would 
occur. Though no one could now have 
the temerity to reject the scene, were it not 
rejected by the Folio ; yet consciously and 
deliberately repudiated there, we may well 
feel at liberty to prefer the professional and 
disinterested verdict of Heminge and Con- 
dell, who certainly give no intimation in 
their preface that the original papers c re- 
ceived from him* with scarce a blot, were 
destroyed as Mr. Dyce supposes, when 
the Globe Theatre was burned down in 
1613. This ill-timed monologue though 
weak itself does not really make Hamlet 
essentially weaker ; but there is no reason 
why the discarded superfluities of genius 
should be perpetuated only to obscure the 
pure gold of its priceless bequests. One 
thing however is clear: unless Hamlet 
planned the subsequent piratical capture, 

149 



A Review of Hamlet 



the Soliloquy is not only superfluous and 
contradictory, but absurd. Unhappy as it 
is in all other respects, it serves to demon- 
strate conclusively that in Shakespeare's 
own mind, the piratical capture was a pre- 
meditated certainty. 

With its present Fifth Scene, the Fourth 
Act properly begins. One victim has al- 
ready fallen — Polonius : Ophelia is the 
next. The shock of her father's death by 
the hand of her lover, has crazed her. It 
would have suited most artists to exhibit 
the first crash of the tragical fact; but 
Shakespeare mercifully spares us the sight 
of the blow descending on that vestal 
forehead. Her mind is murdered off the 
stage. The grand master will not over- 
charge his canvas with details which a lesser 
soul would grasp at. The spiritual trans- 
formation is complete before she reappears. 
Instead of horror heaped on horror, the 
very madness of this Rose of May is turned 
' to favor and to prettiness/ She softens 
the gloom and terror of the play into over- 
do 



A Review of Hamlet 

powering pathos. Though her character 
has been only sketched, as if by the finger 
of a god, in snow, what a vast dramatic 
purpose it serves ! Her madness is the 
pivot of one Act, her burial of another ; her 
maiden beauty the inspiration of both ; 
while, over the whole tragic expanse, her 
image flits like the dove that followed the 
raven ! What can be sadder than her story ! 
But a little while ago, she was bewailing 
the overthrow of c that noble and most 
sovereign reason/ and now the sweet bells 
of her own mind are not only jangled out 
of tune, but ruined, broken ! One tithe of 
the woe that Hamlet carries, suffices to 
crush her. As if in rebuke of that impa- 
tient Ghost, the first attempt at revenge 
involves the sacrifice of this unblemished 
innocent. But Hamlet escapes the spec- 
tacle. By an inspired fitness of events, his 
banishment just precedes her madness. 
His self-contained lunacy could never have 
endured the test of her hopeless, absolute 

madness. The side by side contrast of real 

151 



A Review of Hamlet 



with simulated insanity, though sustained 
to advantage in Lear, between a young 
noble and an old king, would be a ghastly 
impossibility between lovers. 

Ophelia is stark mad. The only gleam 
of a purpose left is in the brief threat that 
Laertes will avenge her father : c My 
brother shall know of it' : her only mem- 
ories are dim, distracted impressions of the 
events that crazed her; songs of Polonius — 

dead and gone, 

At his head a grass green turf, 

At his feet a stone. 
White his shroud, as the mountain snow 

Larded with sweet flowers, 
Which bewept to the grave did go 

With true-love showers. 



And again : 



And will he not come again ? 

And will he not come again ? 
No, no, he is dead, 
Go to thy death bed, 

He never will come again. 
152 



A Review of Hamlet 



His beard was white as snow, 
All flaxen was his poll : 

He is gone, he is gone, 

And we cast away moan : 
God ha' mercy on his soul ! 

Songs of Hamlet too : c To-morrow is St. 
Valentine's day/ The whole ditty is but 
the reflex of her discarded lover's passion- 
ate jesting, the dark shadow of masculine 
yearning projected athwart the snows of 
virgin purity, deeper and distincter in this 
intellectual eclipse ; the wild echo of his 
own fierce raillery resounding from the 
living sepulchre wherein her maiden mind 
lies buried. 

And sometimes too, the twin ideas to 
which her bewildered brain is feebly cling- 
ing, her love and her grief, run incoher- 
ently together : 

They bore him barefaced on the bier ; 
Hey non nonny nonny, hey nonny ; 

And on his grave rain'd many a tear, 

Fare you well, my dove ! 
'53 



A Review of Hamlet 



And again : 

There 's a daisy : — I would give you some vio- 
lets, but they withered all 

When my father died : they say he made a good 
end. — 

For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy. 

Ah, how true, how mournful, but 
above all, how marvellous this inspired 
imagination in whose imperishable mirror 
humanity seems more tangible, more in- 
telligible, than even in its own bodily 
substance ! Seeing nature with Shake- 
speared eyes, is like reading the heavens 
with a glass of infinite range and power ; 
wonder on wonder rolls into view; systems, 
dependencies, mysteries, relations, never 
before divined; tokens of other atmos- 
pheres, gleams of erratic luminaries that 
seem to spurn all law yet move obedient 
to one complex impulse ; glimpses of fresh 
courier light cleaving the vast immensity 
on its way to our yet unvisited world, 

and all the while, the soul, uplifted by 

154 



A Review of Hamlet 



the vision, is flooded with the very music 
of the spheres. 

If aught were wanting to render this play 
the supreme masterpiece of human genius, 
it is found in the contrast between Hamlet 
and Laertes, each with a father murdered, 
and each impatient for revenge. Laertes 
is a hero after the popular heart ; gallant, 
passionate, resolute ; moving as level to his 
aim c as the cannon to his blank/ He 
hardly hears of his father's death, before 
he is in Denmark ; hardly in Denmark, 
before he storms the Palace. Unscrupu- 
lous, unconscientious, irreligious, he drives 
madly on where Hamlet is compelled to 
halt. 

To hell allegiance ! vows to the blackest devil ! 
Conscience and grace to the profoundest pit ! 
/ dare damnation : to this point I stand, 
That both the worlds I give to negligence, 
Let come what comes ; only I '11 be revenged 
Most thoroughly for my father. 

With inimitable skill the mighty dramatist 
details precisely the forfeiture of soul from 

155 



A Review of Hamlet 



which Hamlet, except in one wild tumult 
of delirious wrath, steadily recoils. 

Hamlet's hands are tied by conscience 
and faith : Laertes has, practically, neither; 
has a talent for blasphemy ; delights in 
daring the gods to do their worst ; would 
be glad to cut a throat in the Church. Yet 
how pitifully dwarfed is the son of Poloni- 
us, beside the son of the Sea-King ! How 
he quails before the royal pair that in 
Hamlet's grasp were powerless as sparrows 
in the clutches of an eagle ! It seems as if 
Shakespeare had anticipated the demand 
for more dash in his hero, and presented 
this type of a fast young soldier only to 
exalt the grandeur of the much miscon- 
strued prince. Those who point to Laertes' 
prompt action to revenge his father's 
death, in contrast to Hamlet's delay, forget 
that Hamlet's father was thought to have 
died a natural death. Hamlet had no proof 
to verify his suspicions ; — his only witness 
was the Ghost ! Beside the measured, prin- 
cipled retribution of Hamlet, the revenge 

156 



A Review of Hamlet 



of Laertes is vulgar, cowardly and criminal ; 
his anathemas but the coarse mouthing of 
a school-boy. Imagine for a moment that 
c Cutpurse of the Empire' venturing to 
say to Hamlet, — - 

Why now you speak 
Like a good child, and a true gentleman. 

Or conceive, in Hamlet's mouth, that rant 
about c the life-rendering pelican/ 

Midway between these two extremes, — 
the unreflecting braggart and the self- 
accuser c thinking too precisely on the 
event/ — lie the classical hero and the 
Christian saint. Either would have dis- 
posed of the case in a more summary way ; 
the saint by unhesitating and complete 
forgiveness ; the hero proper by a revenge 
less dilatory than Hamlet's and less treach- 
erous than Laertes'. That the patience 
of a saint may be rendered as sublimely 
dramatic as the vindictiveness of a sinner, 
is proved by Calderon in his Principe Con- 
stante. But Shakespeare has not chosen 

157 



A Review of Hamlet 



to represent a saint, but to show how even 
a fair infusion of Christian faith must 
modify the ancient heroic model. The 
hero in whom religion dominates, would 
be a higher ideal ; the hero in whom un- 
hesitating and unsullied valor dominates, 
a greater personal favorite : but neither 
perhaps would have such a hold on the 
wide heart of humanity, or prove such a 
permanent joy and wonder, as this pro- 
longed uncertain struggle of matchless 
intellect and bewildered conscience with 
madness and despair. 

Hamlet is exalted over the mere man 
of animal courage and passion, not only 
intellectually and physically, but morally 
too. The reckless c darer of damnation ' 
is unfortunately ready to dare dishonor 
too. The King might have spared him- 
self the pains of feeling his way so nicely 
how far in villainy he could venture with- 
out shocking his man. They are both of 
a mind, although the master villain is the 
King : 

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A Review of Hamlet 



King. With ease, 

Or with a little shuffling, you may 

choose 
A sword unbaited, and, in a pass of 

practice, 
Requite him for your father. 

Laertes. I will do it : 

And for that purpose, I '11 anoint my 

sword. 

King. I '11 have proffer'd him 

A chalice for the nonce ; whereon but 

sipping, 
If he by chance escape your venom'd 

stuck, 
Our purpose may hold there. 

Thus thickens the plot : in the fore- 
ground, the two conspirators, vindictive, 
eager, aggressive ; in the distance, with 
Horatio, the great defensive avenger, mov- 
ing ghostlike to his doom and theirs ! 

The King has been driven to these des- 
perate measures by the news of Hamlet's 
escape and return : — 

Mess. Letters, my lord, from Hamlet. — 
King. From Hamlet ! (reads) ' High and mighty, 

159 



A Review of Hamlet 



— you shall know I am set naked on 
your kingdom. To-morrow shall I beg 
leave to see your kingly eyes.' — 

c High and mighty ! ' What grim sardonic 
scorn ! How it smites him between the 
brows, as if with an axe ! 'High and mighty I ' 
How the outmanoeuvred assassin starts 
and staggers beneath the blow. 

What should this mean ? Are all the rest come 

back ? 
Or is it some abuse, and no such thing ? 

Can you advise me ? 

He is stretched on a prelusory rack, to 
which instant death were mercy. 
The letter to Horatio is longer : 

Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of 
very warlike appointment gave us chase : 
Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put 
on a compelled valour, etc. 

Before discussing the rest of the letter, let 
us examine this perpetually misunderstood 

piratical capture. We have already noticed 

1 60 



A Review of Hamlet 



Hamlet's first glance at it, ^ I see a cherub 
that sees them? But there is a previous 
most positive and most specific allusion to 
it, at the close of the interview with his 
mother : 

O 't is most sweet 
Where in one line two crafts directly meet. 

If the word crafts had its present maritime 
significance in Shakespeare's time, the 
double meaning is suggestive of a prear- 
ranged capture. How arranged, is neither 
here nor there ; but opportunities of char- 
tering a free cruiser could not have been 
wanting to a prince of Denmark ; and what 
is more significant, the fleet of Fortinbras 
was then in port at Elsinore. There is an 
understanding, just ever so vaguely glanced 
at, between the two young princes. But 
the following lines admit of but one inter- 
pretation ; especially in connection with 
his perfect willingness to go : 

There 's letters sealed : and my two school- 
fellows, — 
Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd, — 
11 161 



A Review of Hamlet 



They bear the mandate : they must sweep my 

way, 
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work ; 
For 't is the sport to have the enginer 
Hoist with his own petard; and 't shall go hard 

BUT I WILL DELVE ONE YARD BELOW THEIR 
MINES 

And blow them to the moon ! 

One would think it required a miraculous 
allowance of critical obtuseness to ignore 
a counterplot so strikingly pre-announced. 
Yet, opening Coleridge, you find ' Ham- 
let's capture by the pirates : how judi- 
ciously in keeping with the character of 
the over-meditative Hamlet, ever at last 
determined by accident or by a fit of pas- 
sion ! ' And opening Ulrici you find, 
' He cheerfully obeys the command to visit 
England, evidently with the view, and in 
the hope, of there obtaining the means and 
opportunity (perhaps the support of Eng- 
land, and a supply of money and men, for 
an open quarrel with his uncle) to set 
about the work in a manner worthy both 

162 



A Review of Hamlet 



of himself and its own importance.' God 
save the mark ! c Accident frustrates his 
plans. Captured by pirates, he is set on 
shore in Denmark against his will/ etc. 
And, opening Wilhelm Meister you find 
Hamlet's c capture by pirates, and the death 
of the two courtiers by the letter which 
they carried,' regarded as ' injuring ex- 
ceedingly the unity of the piece, particu- 
larly as the hero has no plan' After such 
obvious, amazing misconception, one may 
be pardoned for believing he sees 



' Two points in Hamlet's soul 

Unseized by the Germans yet.' 

To make assurance doubly sure, comes 
the letter to Horatio, c In the grapple, / 
boarded them ; on the instant they got clear 
of our ship : so I alone became their pris- 
oner. They have dealt with me like 
thieves of mercy; but they knew what 
they did/ Can circumstantial proof go 
farther? Could any twelve men of sense, 

on such a record, acquit Hamlet of being 

163 



A Review of Hamlet 



an accessory before, as well as after, the 
fact ? 

The act ends with the Queen's narration 
of Ophelia's death, swanlike, singing her 
soul away under the willow aslant the 
brook. But before passing to the Fifth 
Act, notice how the Grand Master has 
summed up and defined in one word the 
exact amount of disease in Hamlet's mind : 

That I essentially am not in madness, 
But mad in craft. 

With this flashing line of light, the great 
poet marks the precise limits of Hamlet's 
melancholy so sharply, that any attempt 
at a clearer statement is but to gild refined 
gold, or paint the lily. If the text is ab- 
struse, any comment must be more so. 

Up to the end of the Third Act, the 
material was so superabundant that the 
story of Hamlet may be said to have thus 
far written itself. But the most consum- 
mate art was required to furnish incident 
enough for the two remaining Acts, and 

164 



A Review of Hamlet 



invent a catastrophe that should prove an 
adequate solution of all this tangled skein 
of action, thought and agony. 

We have seen how perfectly the Fourth 
Act manages to connect the past and future 
of the drama by a present which, although 
replete with a tragic interest of its own, is 
also in an eminent degree both retro- 
spective and prophetic. But the develop- 
ment of the Fifth Act was inconceivably 
more difficult : it is the creation of a world, 
not out of mental chaos, but out of nothing. 
In this wonderful Act, paltry accessories, 
small side-bits of detail, are so exalted, 
transfigured and divinely illuminated, that 
they assume the dignity of events. Here, 
in marked perfection we see — 

4 The grace and versatility of the man.' 
1 His power and consciousness and self-delight.' 

We accept as matters of course, — we 
make no marvel now over those wonder- 
ful clowns, and Yorick's skull ; the funeral 
procession, the grapple in the grave, and 

165 



A Rev i c%v of Hamlet 



Osric : but viewed solely as dramatic con- 
trivances, they are miracles of construction. 
The deep funereal gloom, the weird sepul- 
chral torch-light, which was thrown around 
the first three acts by means of the Ghost, 
is extended over the last two by means of 
Ophelia. 

Hamlet's tilt with the sexton is not the 
least enjoyable of his encounters, or the 
easiest of his victories. In a trial of wit 
between prince and clown, as in a battle 
between a lion and a fly, insignificance is 
apt to have the best of it. But even at 
this disadvantage, Hamlet's patient cour- 
tesy is eventually an overmatch for the 
sexton's shrewd and superhumanly aggra- 
vating incivility. The caustic old curmud- 
geon absolutely grows genial beneath the 
calm unruffled smile of him that was mad 
and sent into England. 

Cloivn. Here 's a skull now ; this skull hath lain 
far in the earth three-and-twenty years. 
Ham. Whose was it ? 

1 66 



A Review of Hamlet 



Clown. A whoreson mad fellow's it was ; whose 
do you think it was ? 

Ham. Nay, I know not. 

Clown. A pestilence on him for a mad rogue ! 
' a poured a flagon of Rhenish on my 
head once. This same skull, sir, was 
Yorick's skull, the King's jester, 

Ham. This ? 

Clown. E'en that. 

Ham. Let me see. Alas ! poor Yorick ! 

And at the first full cadence of that 
divine voice, the sexton is mute forever ! 

(Enter Priests, £sV., in procession ; the 

corpse of Ophelia, Laertes and 

Mourners following; King, ghieen, 

their trains, &c.) 

Ham. But soft ! but soft ! aside ; here comes 

the King. 

The Queen, the courtiers : who is it 

that they follow 
And with such maimed rites ? 

Horatio is silent : apprehensive of mis- 
chief should Hamlet and Laertes meet: 
unable to tell his friend that Ophelia is 

dead. 

167 



A Review of Hamlet 



Laer. What ceremony else ! 

Ham. That is Laertes, 

A very noble youth : mark. 
Laer. What ceremony else ? 

Priest. Her obsequies have been as far enlarged 
As we have warranty ; her death was 

doubtful : 
And that but great command o'ersways 

the order, 
She should in ground unsanctified have 

lodg'd 
Till the last trumpet. 
Laer. Must there no more be done ? 
Priest. No more be done : 

We should profane the service of the dead 
To sing a requiem and such rest to her 
As to peace-parted souls. 
Laer. Lay her i' the earth, 

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh 
May violets spring ! I tell thee, churlish 

priest, 
A ministering angel shall my sister be 
When thou liest howling. 
Ham. What, the fair Ophelia ! 

^ueen. Sweets to the sweet : farewell ! 

(Scattering flowers.) 
168 



A Review of Hamlet 



I hop'd thou shouldst have been my 

Hamlet's wife: 
I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, 

sweet maid, 
And not to have strew'd thy grave. 

How different this high-bred, graceful 
lament from the low wailing of Laertes. 
This choleric stripling, whose heart was 
in Paris ; who cowers before a c King of 
shreds and patches/ yet bullies an irrespon- 
sible and discretionless priest ; who had 
even more than the full fraternal indiffer- 
ence to his sister until she lost her reason 
and her life; this small Hector must now 
make a scene over her dead body. And 
such a scene ! His plunge into the open 
grave is unworthy of the mountebank 
from whom he bought the mortal unction ; 
his invocation enough to madden any 
honest onlooker. All that palpable rant, 
all that sham despair, all that base mortal 
thunder, in the holy grave of the un- 
polluted girl ! 

169 



A Review of Hamlet 



O treble woe 
Fall ten times treble on that cursed head 
Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense 
Deprived thee of! Hold off the earth awhile, 
Till I have caught her once more in mine arms : 

(Leaps into the grave.) 
Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead, 
Till of this flat, a mountain you have made, 
To o'ertop old Pelion, or the skyish head 
Of blue Olympus. 

Hamlet's instant advance is like the 
swoop of an eagle, the charge of a squad- 
ron, the levelled curse of a prophet. 

What is he whose grief 
Bears such an emphasis ? whose phrase of 

sorrow 
Conjures the wandering stars, and makes them 

stand 
Like wonder-wounded hearers ? This is I, 
Hamlet, the Dane. (Leaps into the grave.) 

Laer. The devil take thy soul ! 

(Grappling with him.) 
Ham. Thou prayest not well. 

I prithee, take thy fingers from my 

throat ; 

170 



A Review of Hamlet 



For, though I am not splenetive and 

rash, 
Yet have I in me something dangerous, 
Which let thy wisdom fear; hold off 
thy hand ! 
King. Pluck them asunder. — 
Queen. Hamlet, Hamlet ! 

All. Gentlemen. — 

Hor. Good my lord, be quiet. — 

( The attendants part them and they come out 
of the grave.) 
Ham. Why, I will fight with him upon this 
theme 
Until my eyelids will no longer wag. 
Queen. O my son ! What theme ? 
Ham. I lov'd Ophelia ; forty thousand brothers 
Could not with all their quantity of 

love, 
Make up my sum. — What wilt thou do 
for her ? 
King. O he is mad, Laertes. 
Queen. For love of God forbear him. 
Ham. 'Swounds, show me what thou 'It do; 

Woo't weep ? woo't fight ? woo't fast ? 

woo't tear thyself? 
Woo't drink up eisel ? eat a crocodile ? 
171 



A Review of Hamlet 



I'll do't. — Dost thou come here to 

whine ? 

To outface me with leaping in her grave ? 

Be buried quick with her, and so will I : 

And, if thou prate of mountains, let 

them throw 
Millions of acres on us, till our ground, 

Singeing his pate against the burning 

zone, 
Make Ossa like a wart ! Nay, an 

thou* It mouth. 
I '11 rant as well as thou. 

What can be juster, what can be grander ! 
Mortal love and manly scorn were never 
strung before or since to such sublime 
intensity. The foot of true love lies on 
the prostrate sham love, like the foot of 
Michael on Lucifer; though here the an- 
gelic brow is flushed and ruffled with the 
rage of combat. The c living monument ' 
promised by the King is already in posi- 
tion : over the dead maiden stands the 
doomed lover, proclaiming his full faith 
before assembled Denmark in tones, whose 

172 



A Review of Hamlet 



echoes ringing down the aisles of death, 
must have conveyed to her ransomed soul 
and reillumined mind the dearest trib- 
ute of mortality to perfect the chalice of 
spiritual bliss. That sweet face on the 
threshold of another sphere, must have 
turned earthward awhile to catch those 
noble, jealous words. Yet this superb 
and well-merited rebuke has been criticised 
as a mere c yielding to passion/ as a c sud- 
den fall, from the calm height of philo- 
sophical reflection on the frailty of human 
life, into the degrading depths of youthful 
passion and inconsiderateness ; ' while the 
whole scene has been charged with c medi- 
tative excess/ and with impeding the 
proper march of the action, forgetting that 
it is pardonable, and natural, under the 
terrible shock of this first sudden knowl- 
edge of Ophelia's death while standing 
by her open grave ! Heaven help us 
how we grumble over God's best manna 
in the desert ! Time, place, and circum- 
stance considered, that annihilation of 

i73 



A Review of Hamlet 



Laertes is one of the sublimest assertions 
of moral and intellectual supremacy in all 
Shakespeare. 

Minds of surpassing reach, hearts of 
love, souls of truth, enjoy the lordly right 
to acquit others and blame themselves. 
And when, as in Hamlet's case, this mag- 
nanimity is accompanied by refined ideal- 
ism and morbid delicacy, the smallest 
approach to violence, however pardonable, 
is apt to furnish a ground for self-reproach. 
Even before leaving the grave-yard he 

attempts a reconciliation, — 

Hear you, Sir ; 
What is the reason that you use me thus ? 
I loved you ever. 

His subsequent regret is but another 
grace of his ' most generous ' nature. 

But I am very sorry, good Horatio, 

That to Laertes I forgot myself; 

For, by the image of my cause, I see 

The portraiture of his : I '11 court his favours. 

He has then had time for reflection : 
time for conversation with his invaluable 

i74 



A Review of Hamlet 



friend ; time to realize the heart-rending 
fact that Ophelia must have believed him 
the wilful murderer of her father, and that 
Laertes and all the world, except his 
mother, were justified in so regarding him. 
It was under the spell of conscious inno- 
cence and ignorant or forgetful of this con- 
structive guilt that he leaped into the 
grave. He now comprehends and pardons 
the indignation of Laertes ; but his own 
conduct was far less influenced by the 
violence of the son, than by the exagger- 
ated ranting of the brother. For he can- 
not help adding, with a glow of reanimated 
disdain : 

But, sure, the bravery of his grief did put me 
Into a towering passion. 

Just as Hamlet's exact mental condition 
was determined by the line of light, 

That I essentially am not in madness 
But mad in craft : — 

so in this scene, the essence of his charac- 

i75 



A Review of Hamlet 



ter is revealed by another flash of dis- 
criminating genius : 

For though I am not splenetive and rash, 
Yet have I in me something dangerous. 

Yet the King, relying on the double 
death prepared by himself and Laertes, is 
singularly tranquil. 

Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son, 
An hour of quiet shortly shall we see; 
Till then, in patience, our proceeding be. 

That hour of quiet never arrives. In 
the conversation with Horatio, that opens 
the last scene, there is more about the 
voyage to England. Hamlet knew well 
enough that his conductors were marshal- 
ling him to knavery ; but the unsealing of 
their grand commission, and the device of 
a new one, was a sudden inspiration. 

There's a divinity that shapes our ends 
Rough-hew them how we will. — 

Much follows from this unpremeditated 
176 



A Review of Hamlet 



and most legitimate theft : it is as fertile 
of results as the dropping of the handker- 
chief in Othello. In the first place, besides 
ascertaining the full extent of the royal 
knavery, he obtains full proof, under the 
royal seal, of the King's villainy. In the 
second place, this royal commission, which, 
in the presentiment or rather in the assur- 
ance of speedy death, he entrusts to Hora- 
tio, will be a justification before the world 
of the blow which must soon be delivered ; 
will shield the princely name, about which 
he is so solicitous, from posthumous ob- 
loquy, and assist in consigning the seeming- 
virtuous wearer of the precious diadem to 
everlasting infamy. In the third place, 
Rosecrantz and Guildenstern, those supple 
traitors to all the rights of fellowship, to 
all the consonancy of youth, to all the 
obligations of ever preserved love, are 
finally though most cruelly disposed of 
by this de jure King of Denmark, who 
carries his father's signet in his purse. 

They are not even near his conscience ; 

12 i 77 



A Review of Hamlet 



their defeat 

Does from their own insinuation grow : 
'Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes 
Between the pass and fell incensed points 
Of mighty opposites. 

What perfect nerve, what ready wit, 
what jubilant power, in sitting calmly- 
down and writing fairly out that earnest 
conjuration from the King. Nor is that 
earnest conjuration dictated by malice 
against his former friends, but purely in 
self-defense. It is the only second hope 
on which he can count ; for if the chances 
of the sea prevent the contemplated rescue, 
he is infallibly lost without that earnest 
conjuration. 

The whole c rash ' undertaking is a sup- 
plemented plot ; a reserved escape ; an 
c indiscretion ' only meant to serve in case 
his pirate plot should fail. For, two days 
at sea without sign of the friendly pirate, 
it was not unnatural that his fears should 
forget his manners. Besides, there was 
more than a chance, in the event of his 

178 



A Review of Hamlet 



escape, of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern 
returning to Denmark, as they should have 
done when they lost Hamlet, instead of 
keeping on to England. What determined 
them to c hold their course/ could only- 
have been either the fear of facing their 
royal master after Hamlet's escape, or an 
absurd supposal that Hamlet would follow 
them, if released, rather than risk a return 
to Elsinore. Be that as it may, Hamlet's 
measures are strictly defensive and strictly 
justifiable; their doom is exclusively the 
result of their own obtrusiveness and folly. 
Still, we cannot acquit the Prince of the 
same cold cruelty that he showed at the 
death of Polonius. He might have made 
prison their doom instead of death, though 
it is true that in Shakespeare's time cruelty 
and torture were terribly prevalent and 
men were callous. Horatio's ignorance 
of the capture is no argument against its 
being premeditated. It would have been 
very unlike Hamlet, either to compromise 

his friend, who remained at court in ser- 

179 



A Review of Hamlet 



vice of the King, or to extend his secret 
needlessly. 

Indeed it is only after hearing all the 
details of the royal knavery, that Horatio, 
true liegeman to the Dane, although be- 
longing to the party of the future, ex- 
claims, ' Why> what a king is this?' — 
And it is only then that Hamlet ventures 
far enough to say to this noble, single- 
minded soldier, whom he never could or 
would have tempted into treason, whose 
good opinion is the only human verdict 
he cares for, — it is only then he ventures 
on that fearful summing up : 

Does it not, think'st thee, stand me now upon ? 

He that hath kill'd my king, 

Popp'd in between the election and my hopes, 

Thrown out his angle for my proper life, 

And with such cozenage ; is 't not perfect con- 
science, 

To quit him with this arm ? and is 't not to be 
damn'd, 

To let this canker of our nature come 

In further evil ? 

1 80 



A Review of Hamlet 



The honorable officer and gentleman is 
silent ; but the fast friend and wary man 
of action answers : 

It must be shortly known to him from England 
What is the issue of the business there. 

Hamlet's reply includes all that need be 
said between them ; two such men soon 
understand each other : 

// w ill be short : the interim is mine ; 

And a man's life no more than to say — one ? 

After that the conversation instantly 
changes. 

It must have been observed that Ham- 
let is the most elliptical, as well as the 
profoundest, of the tragedies. Here, es- 
pecially, Shakespeare unrolls his grand, 
mysterious panorama, without vouchsafing 
a word of explanation ; here, especially, 
he imitates the great Creator, in permit- 
ting us the inexhaustible delight of pene- 
trating the veiled secrets of his mighty 
works ; here, especially, he arrays his tragic 
events as they occur in real life, leaving 

181 



A Review of Hamlet 



great gaps to be filled by inference or 
conjecture ; here, especially, although far 
from aiming at the significant obscurity 
which Goethe constantly affected, he seems 
to disdain wearing his secret on his sleeve : 
and instead of tying his reader down to a 
single view, allows him a standpoint and 
speculations of his own. We are left to 
infer the interval, and objects of delay ; to 
infer the reasons of all that singular be- 
havior to Ophelia; to infer the piratical 
capture ; to infer a thousand subtle things 
everywhere beneath the surface. The 
farther the play progresses, the more ellip- 
tical it becomes. The last scene is the 
most elliptical of all : it begins with an 
ellipsis. You never suspect the errand 
Hamlet is on, until you happen to hear 
that little word c The interim is mine I * 
It means more mischief than all the mono- 
logues ! No threats, no imprecations ; no 
more mention of smiling, damned villain ; 
no more self-accusal ; but solely and 

briefly — 

182 



A Review of Hamlet 



It will be short : the interim is mine ! 

Then, for the first time, we recognize the 
extent of the change that has been wrought 
in Hamlet; then, for the first time, we 
perfectly comprehend his quiet jesting 
with the clown, his tranquil musings with 
Horatio, his humorous recital of the events 
of the night aboard the vessel, when the 
fighting in his heart would not let him 
sleep. The man is transformed by a great 
resolve : his mind is made up I He has 
now placed in the safe possession of 
Horatio the Royal Commission contain- 
ing the full proof of the King's villainy. 
The return of the vessel from England 
will be the signal for his own execution 
and therefore the moral problem is solved : 
the only chance of saving his life from a 
lawless murderer, is to slay him ; it has 
become an act of self-defense : he can do 
it with perfect conscience. He has calcu- 
lated the return voyage ; he has allowed 
the longest duration to his own existence 
and the King's ; he has waited to the very 

183 



A Review of Hamlet 



last moment for the intervention of a 
special providence. c Now or never must 
the blow be struck ! ' 

All this and more is revealed by that 
one word, c The interim is mine I * At 
the very moment he encounters the clown 
in the churchyard, he is on his death 
march to the Palace at c Elsinore.' The 
only interruption of the calm resolve by 
which he is now possessed, is the affair 
with Laertes, to which he turns the con- 
versation in princely care of Horatio's 
spotless honor. Is not all this indirectly 
but unerringly conveyed? And yet how 
curiously our standard criticism ignores it. 

Horatio starts at the coming footstep, as 
if he had been listening to treason : c Peace! 
who comes here ? ' As the vexed stream 
of Hamlet's life approaches the abyss, the 
foam and anguish of the rapids subside ; 
and just over the level brink of calm and 
light that edges the fall, hovers the c water- 
fly/ Osric. Hamlet is patient with him 

— almost as patient as with the sexton — 

184 



A Review of Hamlet 



although constitutionally merciless to a 
fool ; whether a fool circuitous like Polo- 
nius, a fool rampant like Laertes, or a 
fool positive like Osric. It is the last 
of his intellectual engagements, this sin- 
gular duel between a dunce on the thresh- 
old of existence, and the stately gentleman 
but three steps from the grave. All forms 
and degrees of intellect have been dwarfed 
beside this most sovereign reason : the 
final contrast is between godlike appre- 
hension and sheer fatuity. The King's 
'Give them the foils, young Osric,' in- 
clines us to think that Osric was even more 
knave than fool. The creature appointed 
to shuffle those unequal foils could hardly 
have failed to detect the one unbated point. 
But he is too slight for dissection. 

With the extinction of this water-fly, 
the great catastrophe approaches. Only 
once, and for a moment, the shadow of 
the coming death depresses him. 

Hor. You will lose this wager, my lord. 
Ham. I do not think so; since he went into 

185 



A Review of Hamlet 



France, I have been in continual prac- 
tice ; I shall win at the odds. Thou 
would'st not think how ill all 's here 
about my heart; but it is no matter. 

Hor. Nay, good my lord. 

Ham. It is but foolery ; but it is such a kind 
of gain-giving, as would perhaps trouble 
a woman. 

Hor. If your mind dislike anything, obey it; 
I will forestall their repair hither and 
say you are not fit. 

Ham. Not a whit; we defy augury; there's 
a special providence in the fall of a 
sparrow. If it be now, 't is not to 
come ; if it be not now, yet it will 
come ; the readiness is all : since no 
man of aught he leaves, knows what 
is 't to leave betimes ? — 

After this last inevitable sigh, there is 
no more repining. His smile is that of 
the morituri te salutant ! He longs to be 
at peace with all mankind but one ; most 
of all with Ophelia s brother. The Quarto 
ruins his whole exquisite apology, by 
making it a suggestion of the Queen's ; 

1 86 



A Review of Hamlet 



the Folio, by another masterly omission, 
leaves it his own free, spontaneous offer- 
ing. His superabundant penitence com- 
pletes itself in this acme of courtesy. 
Alas Laertes ! — 

I do receive your offered love like love, 
And will not wrong it : 

his fingers itching, as he speaks, for that 
unbated and envenomed foil. What a 
refined tenderness in the remote sugges- 
tion of Ophelia that lurks in. Hamlet's 
answer : 

Ham. I embrace it freely, 

And will this brother's wager frankly 

play, 
Give us the foils. — Come on. 

The ocular pathos of the scene is terrible ; 
yonder skipping water-fly ; the King less 
patient with the chalice for the nonce, 
than Laertes with his anointed steel ; 
trumpets and cannon without ; Lords 
and attendants within : and, circled by 

187 



A Review of Hamlet 



this pageant of death, supported only by 
Horatio and the sympathy of his unsus- 
pecting mother, the chosen victim of the 
holiday, passionless, fearless, and seem- 
ingly powerless ; without a fixed c plan for 
the execution of his just revenge/ to quote 
the words of Mr. Strachey, c but what is 
much better, the faith that an opportunity 
will present itself, and the resolution to 
seize it instantly/ Let the Embassy from 
England enter ! He is face to face with 
his foe, sure of his man, even were the 
smiling villain twice a king ! 

Hamlet justifies the sinister calculation 
on his innate nobility of soul. 

he, being remiss, 

Most generous and free from all contriving, 
Will not peruse the foils. 

He asks but one matter of course 
question : 

Ham. These foils have all a length ? 

Osr'ic. Ay, my good lord. ( They prepare to 

188 



A Review of Hamlet 



King. Come, begin ; 

And you the judges bear a wary eye 

Ham. Come on, Sir. 

Come, my lord. (They play.) 
Ham. One. — 

Laer. No. 

Ham. Judgment. 

Osric. A hit, a very palpable hit. — 
Laer. Well ; again. 

The King cannot kill him fast enough. 
The first bout is hardly over before he 
orders up the supplemental bowl. But 
memories of the 'juice of cursed Heba- 
non ' may have crossed Hamlet's mind ; 
he will not touch the leperous distilment : 

King. Give him the cup. — 

Ham. I '11 play this bout first ; set it by 
awhile. — 
Come another hit, what say you ? ( They 
play.) 
Laer. A touch, a touch, I do confess. 
King. Our son shall win. 
£hceen. He's fat and scant of breath. — 

Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy 
brows : 

189 



A Review of Hamlet 



The Queen carouses to thy fortune, 

Hamlet. 
Ham. Good, madam ! 

King. Gertrude, do not drink. 

Queen. I «////, my lord ; I pray you pardon me. 
King. It is the poison'd cup ; it is too late. 

{Aside.) 
Ham. I dare not drink yet, madam ; by and by. 
®)ueen. Come let me wipe thy face. 

How characteristic of the Queen ! doting 
on her son, dictating to her husband to 
the last ! Woe and confinement have 
left their mark on the outward as well as 
the inward Hamlet: the c mould of form ' 
has lost its earlier grace, his breath is 
short, the sweat stands on his brow ; but 
at the first visitation of that Berserker 
wrath, he is terrible, as resistless as ever. 

Laer. My lord, I '11 hit him now. 

King. I do not think 't. 

Laer. And yet 't is almost 'gainst my con- 
science. {Aside.) 

Ham. Come, for the third, Laertes, you but 
dally : 

190 



A Review of Hamlet 



I pray you pass with your best violence ; 

I am afeard you make a wanton of me. 
Laer. Say you so! Come on. {They play.) 
Osric. Nothing, neither way. 
Laer. Have at you now ! 

Laertes wounds Hamlet : then in scuf- 
fling, they change rapiers, and Hamlet 
wounds Laertes. No accidental exchange, 
for Laertes would only have surrendered 
his unbated foil to the sternest compul- 
sion of superior force ; nor could Hamlet 
well have been unaware of that venomed 
stuck and the warm blood that followed 
it. 

King. Part them ; they are incens'd. 
Ham. Nay, come again. 

(The Queen falls .) 
Osric. Look to the Queen there, ho ! — 
Hor. They bleed on both sides ■ — How is it, 

my lord ? 
Osric. How is 't Laertes ? — 
Laer. Why as a woodcock to mine own springe, 
Osric ; 
I am justly killed with mine own 
treachery. 

191 



A Review of Hamlet 



What a fearful triumph in Hamlet's c Nay> 
come again ! ' His wound is older, — the 
poison longer in his veins, than in his 
murderer's ; yet, statue-like he stands at 
bay, erect, alert, defiant, comprehending 
all at a glance, absolute master of the 
situation ! The mutes and audience to 
the act are less awed by the terror of the 
spectacle, than spell-bound, by the majes- 
tic attitude of the avenger 

Ham. How does the Queen ? — 
King. She swoons to see them bleed. 

§>ueen. No, no, the drink, the drink, — O my 
dear Hamlet, — 
The drink, the drink ! — I am poison'd. 
(Dies.) 
Ham. O villainy ! — Ho ! let the door be 
locked ; 
Treachery ! seek it out. 
Laer. It is here, Hamlet : Hamlet thou art 
slain ; 
No medicine in the world can do thee 

good, 
In thee there is not half an hour of life ; 
192 



A Review of Hamlet 



The treacherous instrument is in thy 
hand, 

Unbated and envenom'd; the foul prac- 
tice 

Hath turned itself on me ; lo, here I lie, 

Never to rise again : thy mother 's 
poison'd : 

I can no more : the King, the King 's to 
blame. 
Ham, The point envenom'd too ? 

Its being unbated was a superfluous rev- 
elation. Without pause, or with such 
pause as the panther makes when crouch- 
ing for the leap, the final blow is delivered 
at last : 

Then venom to thy work ! — {Stabs the 
King.) 
All, Treason ! treason ! 

They find their voices at last, these 
lords, attendants, guards and soldiers. 
But to what purpose ? They dare not 
cross the path of that solitary champion 
of the grave, — not though invoked by 
13 193 



A Review of Hamlet 



the piteous appeal of their bleeding 
King ! — 

O, yet defend me, friends ; I am but hurt. 

An instant more, and the hand of Hamlet 
is on his throat. If the archangel of 
judgment stood amongst them, they could 
not crouch more helplessly paralyzed be- 
neath the lifted sword of fire, than before 
this awful incarnation of doom ! 

Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane, 
Drink of this poison : — is thy union here ? 
Follow my mother ! — 

O the awful irony of that fell interroga- 
tive ! deadlier, bitterer than steel or bowl ! 
The last lightning of that departing in- 
telligence ! With one outstretched arm 
he plucks their monarch from their midst, 
drags him to the ground, pinions him be- 
tween his feet; with the other, forces the 
c potent poison ' down the reluctant throat, 
— overwhelming, in one tremendous sec- 
ond, the prostrate villain with a thousand 

deaths. 

194 



A Review of Hamlet 



The King is ground to dust in that 
lurid hurricane of passion ! mind, soul, 
and body shrivel up in that furnace of 
wrath ! And so it might have been, at 
almost any moment, since that night on 
the platform. The Prince was conscious 
of this latent, immeasurable force ; it 
never yet failed him at need ; at the 
right moment, it was ever sure to come 
at his call. An avenger so justly confi- 
dent of his strength may safely await the 
hour when retribution is so righteous and 
complete that it resembles less a human 
intervention than a divine dispensation. 

The last prayer, even more than the 
last confession, of Laertes, extorts our 
compassion : 

Exchange forgiveness with me, noble 

Hamlet : 
Mine and my father's death come not 

upon thee, 
Nor thine on me. (Z)/Vj.) 
Ham. Heaven make thee free of it ! I follow 
thee. 

*95 



A Review of Hamlet 



There is nothing so pathetic, nothing 
so heroic in literature, as the last moments 
of this superb young Prince, — pierced 
with an envenomed wound, bleeding, reel- 
ing, dying, yet making that unbated and 
thrice ensanguined foil, the unquestioned 
sceptre of the moment for friend and 
foe; wrestling with Horatio for the bowl, 
as fiercely as with Laertes in Ophelia's 
grave ; triumphant up to the very gates 
of death. He has more the flash and 
motion of a Homeric god than of a 
man. 

I am dead, Horatio. — Wretched Queen, 

adieu ! — 
You that look pale and tremble at this 

chance, 
That are but mutes or audience to this 

act, 
Had I but time, (as this fell sergeant, 

death, 
Is strict in his arrest,) O I could tell 

you, 
But let it be — Horatio, I am dead ; 
196 



A Review of Hamlet 



Thou liv'st ; report me and my cause 

aright 
To the unsatisfied. 
Hor. Never believe it : 

I am more an antique Roman than a 

Dane : 
Here 's yet some liquor left. 
Ham. As thou 'rt a man, 

Give me the cup : let go, by heaven 

I '11 have it. — 
O good Horatio, what a wounded name, 
Things standing thus unknown, shall 

live behind me ! 
If thou didst ever hold me in thy 

heart, 
Absent thee from felicity awhile, 
And in this harsh world draw thy breath 

in pain, 
To tell my story. {March afar off, and 
shot within.) 

What warlike noise is this ? 
Osric. Young Fortinbras, with conquest come 
from Poland, 
To the ambassadors of England gives 
This warlike volley. 
Ham. O, I die, Horatio ; 

197 



A Review of Hamlet 



The potent poison quite o'ercrows my 

spirit : 
I cannot live to hear the news from 

England ; 
But I do prophesy the election lights 
On Fortinbras : he has my dying voice : 
So tell him, with the occurrents, more 

and less, 
Which have solicited. — The rest is 

silence. (Dies?) 

In this supreme hour, his mission ac- 
complished ; c winning, not losing, the 
cause for which he dies ; ' sure, through 
Horatio, of the verdict of posterity, and 
calmly fronting the dread tribunals of 
eternity with a radically inviolate con- 
science ; he says, half reproachfully, to 
death, as though it were his sole regret 
at leaving life, '■The rest is silence! ' Alas, 
for us as well as for him, the rest is si- 
lence ! Silence for the lips whose music 
has had no equal since the birth of time ; 
silence for the voice whose least recorded 
utterance remains an inspiration for all the 

198 



A Review of Hamlet 



ages ! The solution is complete. The 
wide repose of a perfect catastrophe ex- 
tends to the remotest fibres of the plot. 
In the masterly lines assigned to Osric, 
the simultaneous arrival of Fortinbras and 
England is announced in one breath. Ro- 
sencrantz and Guildenstern have fallen : 
once more the princely Norwegian, who 
represents the future, marches broadly 
into view, irradiating all that scene of 
havoc with the promise of a better day 
for Denmark. Nothing remains but for 
Horatio to tell 



the yet unknowing world 



How these things came about : 

to sustain Fortinbras in claiming his van- 
tage, 

And from his mouth whose voice will draw no 
more ! 

How beautiful that passing tribute to 
the eloquence of his dead friend ! 

In the sad, soldierly orders and martial 
199 



A Review of Hamlet 



praise of Fortinbras the play finds its per- 
fect consummation. 

Let four captains 
Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage; 
For he was likely, had he been put on, 
To have prov'd most royally ; and, for his 

passage, 
The soldier's music and the rites of war 
Speak loudly for him. — 
Take up the bodies ; such a sight as this 
Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss. 
Go, bid the soldiers shoot. 

(A dead march. Exeunt, bearing off the dead 
bodies, after which a peal of ordnance is shot 

off-) 

This is the only play of Shakespeare's 
in which our interest in the central figure 
is compelled to extend itself beyond the 
grave. When Lear, Macbeth, or Othello 
die, our connection with them is dissolved: 
their mortality is the only thing that con- 
cerns us. Whereas, in Hamlet, we find 
ourselves gazing after him into that un- 
discovered country from whose bourne 

200 



A Review of Hamlet 



no traveller returns, uniting in Horatio's 
exquisite adieu, 

Good night, sweet prince : 
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest ! 

Hamlet is not directly on trial for his 
soul, but the question of eternal loss or 
gain is constantly suggested. It is the 
management of this deep shadow of the 
world to come ; this complicated war be- 
tween conscience and passion ; this sharp 
contrast between providence and fate; this 
final appeal from time to eternity, that 
gives the drama such universal, indestruc- 
tible interest. Its felicities of diction, mir- 
acles of invention, exhaustless variety of 
character ; its splendor of imagery, con- 
structive symmetry, and pre-eminent glory 
of thought, would abundantly account for 
the critical admiration it inspires ; but the 
critical awe and popular love it never fails 
to awaken can only be attributed to that 
rare but sovereign charm with which the 

highest human genius can sometimes in- 

20 1 



A Review of Hamlet 



vest a religious mystery. There is a 
poetic compulsion that after the fatal de- 
feat of so blameless a youth, after a career 
of such unexampled, unprovoked agony, 
there should be in distinct perspective the 
ineffable amends of the hereafter. In 
Hamlet, Shakespeare has not only created 
a character but a soul. The deep spiritu- 
ality of the part not only fills the play 
itself, but, acting as a centre of light, dif- 
fuses an ethereal lustre over all his works, 
and supplies the most imperishable ele- 
ment of his immortality. Strike any other 
single play from the list, and though the 
loss would be irreparable, yet the main 
characteristics of the entire fabric would 
remain radically the same. Strike out 
Hamlet, and the aspect of the whole 
structure is hopelessly altered. 



202 



Macbeth 

{A Fragment. Left unfinished by the death of 
the author.) 

Macbeth is one of the twenty plays 
which first appeared in print in the Folio 
of 1623. It was probably written in 1605, 
perhaps two or three years after Hamlet; 
acted probably in 1606, certainly in 16 10, 
at the Globe Theatre. With the excep- 
tion perhaps of Lear, it is the latest of 
the four tragedies. 

Macbeth himself is one of Shake- 
speared great criminal characters. In 
Hamlet, intellect, individual force, and 
courage were on the side of innocence : 
in Macbeth, intellect, energy, and daring 
are on the side of guilt. In Hamlet, the 
villain of the piece is a cunning, cowardly 
voluptuary of small intelligence and 
smaller will ; unscrupulous, unconsci- 
entious, unredeemed by a single approxi- 

203 



Macbeth 

mation to virtue unless it be implied 
fidelity to an incestuous love. In Mac- 
beth, the hero is bold, ambitious, daunt- 
less, dangerous ; with a mind of vast 
undisciplined power : striding from guilt 
to deeper guilt with a speed accelerated 
by remorseful self-abhorrence. The 
" King of shreds and patches " is a self- 
impelled, instinctively and elaborately 
hyprocritical assassin, who takes his rouse, 
keeps midnight wassail, drains his draughts 
of Rhenish down ; who clings compla- 
cently to his crown, his own ambition, 
and his queen ; a smiling Cain, who, with 
but one faint effort at remorse, finds life a 
joy till Hamlet teaches him to fear. 

The Thane of Cawdor is driven half 
reluctantly to crime by a spell of " Magic 
sleight" and the horrible compulsion of a 
fiend-like woman. When he murders 
Duncan he murders sleep ; puts rancours 
in the vessel of his peace ; eats his daily 
meal in fear and shakes nightly in the 
affliction of terrible dreams : sees a gory 

204 



Macbeth 

shadow at his banquets, begins to be 
a-weary of the sun, and instead of being 
sleeker for his sinning, is scared and 
roughened by a fierce despair. Instead 
of the academic gentleness of a prince of 
thirty, we have here the matured manhood 
of a veteran soldier : instead of ellipsis, 
complexity and oblique suggestiveness, 
all is plain and direct ; the plot ascends 
with great broad pyramidal steps which 
there is no mistaking, you cannot miscon- 
ceive the purport and direction ; the only 
difficulty is in keeping up with the gigantic 
stride of the action. The very versifica- 
tion reflects this essential contrast : it is 
bolder, rougher, compacter than Hamlet, 
although, more than once, it softens into 
riper harmony as if longer use had 
enriched the instrument in the master's 
hand. 

The one point of resemblance between 
the two characters is imaginativeness. 
Paradoxical as it sounds at first, Macbeth 

is more imaginative and less courageous 

205 



Macbeth 

than Hamlet. The one point of re- 
semblance between the two plays is the 
introduction of the supernatural ; and 
with this all likeness ends. 

The remarks I have made on Hamlet 
may be considered little better than a 
running commentary on the text. I shall 
venture, however, to treat Macbeth in the 
same way, for I am persuaded that any 
satisfactory analysis of these wonderful 
plays must be mainly out of the poet's 
own mouth. Scholars and men of the 
world interpret Shakespeare in their own 
way or in obedience to established criti- 
cism ; nor can I reasonably hope to make 
these Lectures of any great value to 
them, although, in Hamlet, this very 
object was perhaps too presumptuously 
undertaken. Every educated man has 
his own view of Shakespeare just as he 
has his own view of nature. It is almost 
as difficult to revolutionize his perception 
of one as of the other. Yet these fixed 
ideas admit of partial modification and 

206 



Macbeth 

expansion : something may be gained by 
the suggestions and even by the errors of 
the commonest apprehension. It would 
be a curious infelicity if any discussion of 
the Four Tragedies, however imperfect 
in itself, were entirely devoid of general 
interest. 

But to a very large class, Shakespeare 
has to be taught,— -patiently and minutely 
expounded. This class embraces those 
debarred, — either by scruples of con- 
science or by want of opportunity, — 
from witnessing theatrical representations. 

In the higher collegiate classes gener- 
ally, my professional experience of eight 
years has taught me that Shakespeare, in 
a schoolboy s hands, was apt to be a dead 
letter, — little relished and less under- 
stood ; whereas when interpreted to them 
even with the faintest approach to proper 
elocution, it was both felt and enjoyed. 
Nor do I think that the importance of 
thoroughly educating our college gradu- 
ates in this greatest English author can 

207 



Macbeth 

easily be overestimated. It is a mental 
and psychological enlargement which no 
other single work, and not every library, 
can bestow. In the exhaustless galleries 
of beauty, humor, pathos, passion, and 
power, through which the young mind is 
there conducted, a robust manly taste 
may be generated, that in after life will 
be sure to rebel against a literature which 
tends to degenerate from feminine grace 
into effeminate insipidity. There is many 
a bright fellow in school and college to 
whom Shakespeare, pure and simple in 
the silence of the study-room, would 
prove a bore ; but there is scarcely a 
dunce past sixteen whose appreciation 
cannot be aroused, in an intelligently 
conducted class, as if scales had dropped 
from his eyes. 

It would be well too if girls were ju- 
diciously familiarized with this mighty 
master. Our modern imaginative litera- 
ture is so exclusively devoted to the 
portraiture of a single passion, — love, in 

208 



Macbeth 

all its forms and deformities, delicacies 
and brutalities, old love and young love, 
good love and bad love, true love and 
false love, love heroic, love bucolic, love 
Platonic and love Satanic, — that it would 
really be a service to convince them early 
in life that there are other passions and 
emotions of which even the feminine 
heart is susceptible; that there are other 
things worth chronicling besides the de- 
velopment of personal attachment; that 
Lear may be entertaining although the 
hero is eighty, and Hamlet tolerable 
although agony has made the hero fat 
and scant of breath instead of thin ; that 
Macbeth is interesting although the hero 
is marred and bruised and bronzed and 
middle aged. 

It is for the large class above referred 
to, that the remainder of this course of 
Lectures is principally designed; and here, 
as in Hamlet, the quotations from the 
text will be fuller than if a maturer 
audience were more directly addressed. 

'4 209 



Macbeth 

The curtain rises on an open place, 
thunder and lightning, and the three 
witches — weird incarnations of diabolical 
temptation, semi-diabolical agents, semi- 
prescient of futurity, flitting an instant 
before the coming procession of horror 
like the advanced oriflame of hell, — then 
vanishing. 

First Witch, When shall we three meet again 
In thunder, lightning, or in rain ? 

Sec. Witch. When the hurly burly 's done, 

When the battle 's lost and won. 

Third Witch. That will be ere set of sun. 

First Witch. Where the place ? 

Sec. Witch. Upon the heath. 

There to meet with Macbeth. 

First Witch. I come, Graymalkin ! 

All. Paddock calls : — Anon ! — 

Fair is foul and foul is fair : 
Hover through the fog and filthy 
. air. ( Witches vanish?) 

The story of the battle and Macbeth's 
prowess are told by a wounded sergeant; 
— the treason and death-sentence of Caw- 

2IO 



Macbeth 

dor briefly announced; and then once more, 
amid the muttering thunder of the blasted 
heath, re-enter the ghastly three. Observe 
how wondrously they are sketched in ; not 
with minute personal details like the soli- 
tary phantom in Hamlet, a treatment they 
could not endure, but with broad, vague 
characteristic touches. The enormous 
difficulty of inventing an appropriate lan- 
guage for such nondescripts is inconceivable 
to one who has not tried it. Yet how 
easily it flows ! with what facility the same 
lips that catch the accents of humanity in 
its nearest approaches to deity, can also 
find a voice for the jargon of debased 
mortality in its lowest association with 
demonism. 

First Witch, Where hast thou been, sister ? 

Sec. Witch. Killing swine. 

Third Witch. Sister, where thou ? 

First Witch. A sailor's wife had chestnuts in 

her lap, 
And munch'd, and munch'd, and 

munch'd ; — 

21 I 



Macbeth 



" Give me," quoth I : 
"Aroint thee, witch! the rump- 
fed ronyon cries. 
Her husband 's to Aleppo gone, 

master o' the Tiger. 
But in a sieve I '11 thither sail, 
And, like a rat without a tail, 
I '11 do, I '11 do, and I '11 do. 

Sec. Witch. I '11 give thee a wind. 

First Witch. Thou art kind. 

Third Witch. And I another. 

First Witch. I myself have all the other. — 

Though his bark cannot be lost, 
Yet it shall be tempest-tost. 
Look what I have. 

Sec. Witch. Show me, show me. 

First Witch. Here I have a pilot's thumb, 

Wreck'd as homeward he did 
come. (Drum within.) 

Third Witch. A drum, a drum ! 

Macbeth doth come. 

All. The weird sisters, hand in hand, 

Posters of the sea and land, 
Thus do go about, about : 
Thrice to thine, and thrice to 
mine 

212 



Macbeth 

And thrice again, to make up nine. 
Peace ! — the charm 's wound up. 
{Enter Macbeth and Banquo.) 

The roll of the Scottish drum breaking 
gradually in on this fantastical incantation, 
the entry of Macbeth and Banquo glittering 
in victorious armor, suddenly face to face 
with these crouching, malignant shapes, is 
brilliantly effective. The poorest pair of 
actors that ever trod the boards are sure of 
applause if only for the very power of the 
contrast. Observe how with one sweep 
of the brush these £ posters of the sea and 
land' are colored, the characters of the 
two conquerors discriminated, and the 
whole plot darkly foreshadowed. The 
chieftains do not at once perceive the 
ambushed witches : time is wisely allowed 
for the martial entry to take full effect : 
but as soon as the Three are seen how the 
startled thanes recoil from the incarnation 
of a dream with which neither was entirely 
unfamiliar. And mark how, as soon as 
addressed, the witches forsake their whis- 

213 



Macbeth 



pering, crouching, mumbling diablerie and 
assume a dignity fitting the mistresses of 
the elements and oracles of the future. 

Macb. So foul and fair a day I have not 

seen. 
Banquo How far is 't called to Forres ? — 

What are these 
So wither'd and so wild in their 

attire, 
That look not like the inhabitants 

o' the earth, 
And yet are on 't ? — Live you ? 

or are you aught 
That man may question ? You 

seem to understand me, 
By each at once her choppy finger 

laying 
Upon her skinny lips : — you 

should be women, 
And yet your beards forbid me to 

interpret 
That you are so. 
Macb. Speak if you can : — 

what are you ? 
First Witch. All hail, Macbeth ! hail to thee, 
thane of Glamis ! 
214 



Macbeth 

Sec. Witch. All hail, Macbeth ! hail to thee, 

thane of Cawdor ! 
Third Witch. All hail, Macbeth ! that shalt be 

King hereafter ! 
Ban. Good sir, why do you start and 

seem to fear 
Things that do sound so fair ? — 

I* the name of truth, 
Are ye fantastical, or that indeed 
Which outwardly ye show ? My 

noble partner 
You greet with present grace and 

great prediction 
Of noble having and of royal hope, 
That he seems rapt withal : — to 

me you speak not : 
If you can look into the seeds of 

time, 
And say which grain will grow, 

and which will not, 
Speak, then, to me, who neither 

beg nor fear 
Your favours nor your hate. 
First Witch. Hail ! 
Sec. Witch. Hail ! 
Third Witch. Hail ! 

215 



Macbeth 

First Witch. Lesser than Macbeth and greater. 
Sec. Witch. Not so happy, yet much happier. 
Third Witch. Thou shalt get kings, though thou 
be none : 
So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo. 
First Witch. Banquo and Macbeth, all hail ! 
Macb. Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell 

me more : 
By Sinel's death I know I am 

thane of Glamis ; 
But how of Cawdor ? the thane of 

Cawdor lives, 
A prosperous gentleman ; and to 

be King 
Stands not within the prospect of 

belief, 
No more than to be Cawdor. Say 

from whence 
You owe this strange intelligence ? 

or why 
Upon this blasted heath you stop 

our way 
With such prophetic greeting ? 
Speak, I charge you. 

(Witches vanish.) 
Ban. The earth hath bubbles, as the 

water has, 
216 



Macbeth 

And these are of them : — whither 
are they vanish'd ? 
Macb. Into the air ; and what seem'd cor- 

poral melted 
As breath into the wind. — Would 
they had stay'd ! 
Ban, Were such things here as we do 

speak about ? 
Or have we eaten on the insane 

root 
That takes the reason prisoner ? 
Macb, Your children shall be kings. 

Ban, You shall be king. 

Macb, And thane of Cawdor too, — went 

it not so ? 
Ban, To the selfsame tune and words. 

— who 's there ? 
{Enter Ross and Angus.) 

Both these men are ambitious, both not 
unfamiliar with a royal hope, yet while 
Banquo loftily repels the temptation, Mac-, 
beth is already a murderer at heart : c My ' 
thought, whose murder yet is but fantas- 
tical.' His subsequent hesitation is chiefly 
timidity, his subsequent remorse an excess 

217 



Macbeth 

of superstitious imagination. How he 
gloats over the partial fulfilment of the 
weird prediction : 

Glamis and thane of Cawdor : 
The greatest is behind ! 

How instantly envious of Banquo : 

Do you not hope your children shall be kings, 
When those that gave the thane of Cawdor to 

me 
Promis'd no less to them ? 

How rapt and how exultant : 

Two truths are told, 
As happy prologues to the swelling act 
Of the imperial theme. 

It is but the poorest self-deception to plead 

If chance will have me King, why, chance may 

crown me 
Without my stir. 

His guilty purpose is already busied with 
details : 

218 



Macbeth 

The Prince of Cumberland! that is a step 

(steep ?) 
On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap, 
For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires ; 
Let not light see my black and deep desires : 
The eye wink at the hand ; yet let that be, 
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see. 

All this fell determination in the face of 
the meek King who had just rewarded his 
valor with all the grace and guerdon a 
monarch can bestow ; and who means to 
crown his bounty by a visit to his c peer- 
less kinsman/ It would only be repeat- 
ing Coleridge to dwell upon this first fine 
contrast between Macbeth and Banquo. 
And, although collegians are chiefly here 
addressed, I do not feel at liberty con- 
sciously to detail views which have been 
already elaborated. 

Macbeth's guilt is rendered infernal by 
the combined meekness, magnanimity, in- 
firmities and lovingness of his victim. 
Duncan absolutely dotes on him, with but 

219 



Macbeth 

a halting afterthought for the no less 
deserving Banquo. Lady Macbeth's esti- 
mate of her husband's character must not 
mislead us. It is just such an analysis of 
a human heart as a fiend might make from 
some lonely pinnacle of hell. She has 
abandoned herself, body and soul to am- 
bition, — determined to be Queen though 
damned for it ; her will and courage are 
so perfect, her demoniac logic so consistent, 
that his manly recoil from murder strikes 
her as coward benevolence, his scruples as 
so much piety misplaced. There is not 
much of the milk of human kindness in 
this man's bosom — it only seems so to 
her ; his ambition is as criminal as human 
ambition can be, — her complaint of its 
being ' without the illness should attend 
it' proceeds from a full diabolical posses- 
sion. His character brightens only when 
laid side by side with hers, as a villain 
might look a little whiter arm in arm with 
a fiend. She longs to infect him with her 
infernal malice: 

220 



Macbeth 

Hie thee hither, 
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear; 
And chastise with the valour of my tongue 
All that impedes thee from the golden round, 
Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem 
To have thee crown'd withal. 

Her dedication of herself to the powers of 
darkness, her invocation of night and hell 
and all the sightless substances that wait 
on nature's mischief, bind her more irrevo- 
cably, more sublimely, more distinctly to 
the arch-fiend's service than if the bond 
of blood and parchment had passed 
between them ; the most dauntless, de- 
liberate self-damnation ever perpetrated, — 
a positive wooing of eternal perdition, — 
a deadly, passionate appeal flashed into 
the very heart of hell. She is not simply 
fiendish, but palpably fiend like, A 
woman who acts this should have the lurid 
halo of the damned coiled visibly about 
her brows. What inborn demon in the 
man ever wedded him to such a wife ? 
What a ghastly courtship it must have 

221 



Macbeth 

been ! Could she ever have loved ? loved 
with all that reigning devil in her soul? 
Yet out of all womanhood, he singled her 
to be his own — and calls her c dearest 
chuck/ and loves and fondles her ! The 
surrender of feminine innocence to ser- 
pentine allurement is but the hard condi- 
tion of Eden; the surrender of all manly 
honor to feminine solicitation is an absolute 
divorce between heaven and earth ! The 
ruling grace of manhood is power, of 
womanhood submission. A woman may 
yield to the fascination of superior strength 
or subtlety, in slavish obedience to a 
mysterious instinct, without being radically 
influenced either by the virtues or the vices 
of her idol. But a cruel man so thoroughly 
bad hearted as to ignore all the redeeming 
influences of existence by loving a woman 
crueller than himself, may be said to excel 
her in guilt by the bare enormity of lov- 
ing her. At bottom, Macbeth was worse 
than his wife. With half her undaunted 
mettle he would have ventured on twice 

222 



Macbeth 

her crimes ; for as soon as his courage is 
bolstered by despair, he outstrips her in 
guilt and leaves her fainting, distanced, 
dying in his gory pathway. The stalwart 
regicide hurrying from murder to murder, 
yet puttering with witches and quailing 
before the painted devil of his imagination, 
is in every way more despicable than the 
lost woman sublimely invoking the fiend 
she serves to avert the truer remorse by 
which she ultimately perishes. 

Come, you spirits 
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here ; 
And fill me from the crown to the toe, top-full 
Of direst cruelty ! make thick my blood, 
Stop up the access and passage to remorse; 
That no compunctious visitings of nature 
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep pace between 
The effect and it ! Come to my woman's 

breasts 
And take my milk for gall, you murdering 

ministers, 
Wherever in your sightless substances 
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick 

night, 

223 



Macbeth 

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, 
That my keen knife see not the wound it 

makes, 
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the 

dark, 
To cry " Hold, 'hold!" 

She is even happy in the completeness of 
her fierce intent, in the total extinguish- 
ment of human tenderness, in the passion- 
ate revelry of fully accepted sin. She is 
literally enamoured of guilt, intoxicated 
with demoniac desire. She springs to 
meet her coming lord with the exultant 
bound of a tigress to her mate when the 
scent of blood is on the night wind. 

Great Glamis ! worthy Cawdor ! 
Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter! 
Thy letters have transported me beyond 
This ignorant present, and I feel now 
The future in the instant. 
Macb. My dearest love, 

Duncan comes here to-night. 
Lady M. And when goes hence? 

Macb, To-morrow as he purposes. 

224 



Macbeth 

Lady M. O never 

Shall sun that morrow see ! 

Your face, my thane, is as a book 
where men 

May read strange matters : — to be- 
guile the time, 

Look like the time; bear welcome in 
your eye, 

Your hand, your tongue : look like 
the innocent flower, 

But be the serpent under 't. 
Macb. We will speak further. 

Lady M. Only look up clear; 

To alter favour ever is to fear ; 

Leave all the rest to me. 

The great ruined man with all the gloom 
and agony of guilt in his face, — the woman 
smiling, happy, collected, tranquil as inno- 
cence. How her soul hisses out in those 
four words, c And when goes hence ? ' 
Yet how colloquially Ristori glided over 
it ! c E quando si parte ? ' With just as 
little force and significance as if she were 
putting the question to a hackman on the 
r 5 225 



Macbeth 

Lung' Arno. Ah, could we only have 
heard Rachel give the equivalent of that 
terrible question ! 

In fearful contrast with all this is the 
bland security of the venerable King. 
He enjoys the pleasant site of the castle 
and its nimble air; enjoys Banquo's nice 
dissertation about the temple-haunting 
martlet. His heart and lips are overflow- 
ing with royal courtesy : an ancient grace 
sparkles in all he says and does. 

Give me your hand ; 
Conduct me to mine host: we love him highly, 
And shall continue our graces towards him. 
By your leave, hostess. 

At that very instant, in a lobby in the 
castle, that same host is musing : 

If it were done when 't is done, then 't were well 
It were done quickly : if the assassination 
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch, 
With his surcease, success ; that but this blow 
Might be the be-all and the end-all here. 
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, — 
We 'd jump the life to come. 

226 



Macbeth 

But for certain temporal retribution, the 
life to come might be left out of the calcu- 
lation, ignored, jumped. Observe how 
pointedly this is in contrast with Hamlet, 
who does not set his life at a pin's fee, 
who is only deterred by the dread of some- 
thing after death. Macbeth would relin- 
quish all hope of heaven were temporal 
success the sure consequence of assassina- 
tion : he is daunted only by the impo- 
tence of murder to secure its ends even on 
this bank and shoal of time ; only by the 
inevitable temporal atonement. 

But in these cases, 
We still have judgment here ; that we but teach 
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return 
To plague the inventor; this even-handed justice 
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice 
To our own lips. 

It may seem gratuitous to dwell upon a 
soliloquy which, although somewhat ob- 
scure in its opening by reason of its mas- 
sive thought, must be perfectly intelligible 

227 



Macbeth 

to most readers. Yet as a sample of Shake- 
spearean criticism, I may mention that 
Schlegel gravely cites, c We'd jump the life 
to come ' as evidence c that Macbeth dreads 
the prospect of the life to come ; ' precisely 
the opposite of its first obvious meaning. 
The whole point of the lament is not that 
the eternal jewel of his soul is given to 
the common enemy of man, but (to 
blend two monologues) that rancours put 
poison in the chalice of his peace. The 
double dishonor of the meditated deed, 
the meek unprovokingness of the spotless 
King, are recited not in compassion but 
in regret that the sides of his intent have 
no other spur than vaulting ambition which 
o'erleaps itself. His recoil is but a cow- 
ardly, selfish calculation of the chances 
against him : he will proceed no further 
in the business solely because he has been 
honored of late; because it would be a 
pity to cast aside the golden opinions of 
all sorts of people while in their newest 
gloss. Some flash of generous martial 

228 



Macbeth 

repugnance may have visited him, but not 
articulately. His great fear is the fear of 
failure : his great regret the want of a 
satisfactory stimulant. His fear abates the 
instant his wife details the practicability of 
averting suspicion. A stimulant is sup- 
plied not only by the drink she furnishes 
but by her frightful, impetuous scorn. 
How she fastens on all the covert guilt 
lurking beneath his coy excuses ; how she 
drags it bare and shivering to the surface ; 
how she forces him with her terrible logic 
into open confession that the only dif- 
ference between them is his inveterate, 
essential preliminary cowardice ; not the 
conscience-made cowardice of Hamlet, but 
the prudential c dare not * waiting on c I 
would.' Fiend as she is, her compact 
demoniac eloquence is but the expression 
of the smothered thunder then filling 
the heart of the sullen, far-sighted man. 
There is a certain lurid glory in this un- 
daunted challenge from womanhood to 

guarded royalty, — in this exaltation of 

229 



Macbeth 

feminine weakness over masculine strength. 
Mingled with all its demonism there is 
still the human luxury of triumph. But 
what triumph for a brawny soldier, in his 
own castle, to slay a gray-haired guest 
asleep between two drugged and drunken 
grooms ? What prostitution of the last 
remnant of manhood before that warrior 
dagger can be driven home to a dreaming, 
defenceless, loving heart ? 

The whole dialogue is unparalleled as an 
exhibition of human ferocity and exultant 
animal power. The damnable consistency 
of her guilt lends an intellectual majesty to 
her most horrible utterances. The uncon- 
querable archangel of Paradise Lost is 
dwarfed side by side with this rapt high 
priestess of murder. c She hath a demon; 
and that is the next thing to being full of 
the God/ But let the scene speak for 
itself: it cannot be read too closely or too 
often. 

Macb. We will proceed no further in this busi- 
ness : 

230 



Macbeth 

He hath honour' d me of late; and I 

have bought 
Golden opinions from all sorts of 

people, 
Which would be worn now in their 

newest gloss, 
Not cast aside so soon. 
Lady M. Was the hope drunk 

Wherein you dress'd yourself ? hath it 

slept since ? 
And wakes it new, to look so green and 

pale 
At what it did so freely ? From this 

time 
Such I account thy love. Art thou 

afeared 
To be the same in thine own act and 

valour 
As thou art in desire ? Wouldst thou 

have that 
Which thou esteems't the ornament of 

life, 
And live a coward in thine own esteem, 
Letting " I dare not " wait upon " I 

would," 
Like the poor cat i' the adage ? 
231 



Macbeth 

Macb. Prithee, peace : 

I dare do all that may become a man ; 
Who dares do more is none. 
Lady M. What heart was't, then, 

That made you break this enterprise to 

me ? 
When you durst do it, then you were a 

man; 
And to be more than what you were, 

you would 
Be so much more the man. Nor time 

nor place 
Did then adhere, and yet you made 

them both : 
They have made themselves, and that 

their fitness now 
Does unmake you. I have given suck, 

and know 
How tender 't is to love the babe that 

milks me : 
I would, while it was smiling in my face, 
Have pluck'd my nipple from his bone- 
less gums, 
And dash'd the brains out, had I so 

sworn as you 
Have done to this. 
232 



Macbeth 

Macb. If we should fail ? 

Lady M. We fail ! 

But screw your courage to the sticking- 

place, 
And we'll not fail. When Duncan is 

asleep 
(Whereto the rather shall his day's hard 

journey 
Soundly invite him), his two chamber- 
lains 
Will I with wine and wassail so con- 
vince, 
That memory, the warder of the brain, 
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason 
A limbeck only ; when in swinish sleep 
Their drenched natures lie as in a death, 
What cannot you and /perform upon 
The unguarded Duncan ? what not put 

upon 
His spongy officers, who shall bear the 

guilt 
Of our great quell ? 
Macb. Bring forth men-children only; 

For thy undaunted mettle should com- 
pose 
Nothing but males. — 
2 33 



Macbeth 

I am settled, and bend up 
Each corporal agent to this terrible feat. 
Away, and mock the time with fairest 

show : 
False face must hide what the false 

heart doth know. 

The opening of the Second Act resem- 
bles the opening of Hamlet, — the same 
muffled minor, the same terse picturesque- 
ness, the same unearthly resonance. 

Scene I. — Inverness. Court of Macbeth's 
castle. Enter Banquo, preceded by Fleance 
with a torch. 

Ban. How goes the night, boy ? 

Fie. The moon is down ; I have not heard 

the clock. 
Ban. And she goes down at twelve. 
Fie. I take 't, 't is later, sir. 
Ban. Hold, take my sword : — there 's hus- 
bandry in heaven. 
Their candles are all out : — take thee 

that, too. — 
A heavy summons lies like lead upon me, 
2 34 



Macbeth 

And yet I would not sleep : — merciful 

powers 
Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that 

nature 
Gives way to in repose ! — Give me my 

sword. — 
Who 's there ? 
{Enter Macbeth and a servant with a torch.') 

Banquo's whole demeanor indicates mis- 
trust. He could scarcely have divined 
Macbeth's desperate purpose, but he 
plainly distrusts him. Something in his 
own bosom tells him the man is not to 
be trusted : 

merciful powers, 

Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that 

nature 
Gives way to in repose ! 

If the " all hail " of the weird sisters is 
the temptation of a dream to him, the 
father of a line of kings, what must it 
not be to the darker nature of one who 
is first himself to wear the crown ? The 
tempted but unseduced gentleman would 

235 



Macbeth 

have watched all night but for the leaden 
summons of the banquet or the drugged 
possets of his hostess. He is sad, ner- 
vous, weighed down with a dark presenti- 
ment of woe, ill at ease about his own 
personal safety. The torchlight meeting 
of the two chieftains . . . 

[Here the fragment ends.] 



The University Press, Cambridge, U. S. A. 



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